I just finished watching a series on Freevee called Almost Paradise, a joint Filipino-American production about a medically retired DEA agent who retreats to an island in the Philippines where he had once spent time, thinking it is still the idyllic paradise it was then only to find that it’s been developed and the formerly pristine beaches are now occupied by high rise resorts and hotels. The series interested me because it is set and was filmed on Mactan, an island in the Visayans where I spent a pleasant three or four months way back in 1965, or I should say where I had a bed since I spent much of my time flying around the Western Pacific and Southeast Asia. I had never heard of Mactan when my C-130 squadron at Pope Air Force Base, North Carolina got word we were going there. I was familiar with and had been to Clark Field on Luzon, the main Philippines island I would learn was some 400 miles north of Mactan. During the classified pre-departure briefing (which I wasn’t allowed to attend because I was DNIF and wasn’t going to depart with the squadron but would go over later), attendees were told that Mactan is a tiny island just off of the island of Cebu and across the harbor from Cebu City, the Philippines’ largest city. The island was historically significant because the Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, lost his life there during his ill-fated voyage around the world. (His men, some of them, completed the voyage but Magellan died there.) They were also told that Mactan was the site of one of a number of secret airfields the United States had built at isolated locations around the world to serve as recovery bases for Strategic Air Command’s fleet of bombers during a nuclear war. Like the other bases in the Congo, Pakistan and elsewhere, the airfield on Mactan consisted of a long, concrete runway and large parking ramp, also made of concrete. The Philippines Air Force had a facility there with a fighter squadron flying F-86s but we were going into a “bare base,” meaning hastily constructed base of tents over wooden frames and jungle hooches constructed by SAC’s Red Horse civil engineering units. There was a town on the island called Lapulapu after the Filipino chieftain who killed Magellan and a few barrios. The only Americans on the island other than us were a few Peace Corps workers and missionaries.
I arrived at Mactan a week or so after the rest of the squadron to find a primitive base on an island that hadn’t changed much since the Spanish left the Philippines after the Spanish-American War. We were living in “jungle hooches,” which were wooden frames with wood floors and screen sides with tents for roofs. The Filipinos lived in structures not much better. To be honest, their houses looked like shacks. We had hot and cold running water in the shower house and there was a full field kitchen that served hot meals we ate out of our mess kits, which we then washed in hot water in heated trashcans out behind the building after we ate. The food was flown down from Clark on the daily ration run we flew. There was an all-ranks club in a wood frame, screened building. I believe it, the shower house and the chow hall had tin roofs. A small wooden building served as a base exchange. It wasn’t much. They mainly had candy bars, cigarettes, soft drinks and prophylactics. There was plenty of beer and soft drinks. Filipina women, dependents of the Philippines Air Force men, ran sari-sari stores that were well-stocked with Cokes and San Miguel beer.
When we weren’t flying, we often went to the beach. It was a couple of miles from the base but a shuttle bus ran back and forth at regular intervals. The road to the beach passed through small barrios and individual houses, often with a carabao or two grazing in the adjacent water-filled field with a child, usually a girl, keeping watch to make sure they didn’t stray. Often there would be a child or two astride the animal with an older girl holding it’s lead. The Filipinos, usually women and children since the men were somewhere fishing or working, would smile and wave and call out “Hey Joe” at us as we passed. It made us feel good. There is only one word to describe the beach – pristine. The grayish sand – the Philippines are volcanic and coral – was clean except for fronds from the coconut palms proliferating all over the island. The only structure on the beach was a sari-sari store. The women who ran it were usually the only women on the beach.
The water was clear and teeming with sea life. It was also I wouldn’t say deadly but somewhat dangerous due to the sea urchins nestled among the shells. There was also the possibility of cuts from coral. Consequently, we wore sneakers at the beach. Nevertheless, everyone got stung by the urchins, everyone that is but me! I was never stung, not once. As Tactical Air Command aircrew members, we all had a worldwide mobility kit and along with our mess kits, canteens, pistol belts and Arctic gear, we had an air mattress. We didn’t need the air mattress to sleep on because we had beds with mosquito netting so we took them to the beach. We’d lay on them but we mostly used them to float around and look in the water. Most of us picked up a mask, snorkel, and swim fans at the BX at Clark when we were there either on a ration run or a trip. (I also bought a 30/06 rifle at the Clark BX. A trip to Clark was like going to civilization compared to Mactan.) Looking into the water was like gazing into an aquarium. There were fish all over the place, tropical fish. There were also shellfish and shells in general.
Just down the beach and around a corner was a deep lagoon where Filipino fishermen kept their outrigger canoes. They told us that a huge barracuda lived in the lagoon. I saw that sucker one day. A group of us were snorkeling in the lagoon. We were swimming along on the surface or just deep enough for our snorkel to remain exposed and looking at the seafloor. Whenever someone spotted something interesting, usually a shell, they’d dive down and check it out. We had swam out as far as we felt comfortable and had turned and were making our way back to shore. I was lagging behind. Suddenly, I felt I was being watched. I looked back and all I saw were teeth and a big, black eye! I increased my kicking. I looked back and saw the big head drop back into the depths.
In the evenings we often went downtown, if you can call Lapulapu town. There were about half a dozen clubs on the island and most of them were off-limits. They were the ones on the water where the sailors from the ships that came into Cebu harbor hung out. Sailors like to blow off steam when they’re in port so the air police and base commander declared the waterfront bars off-limits. I was in one of them a time or two. The patrons were mostly Europeans. I never saw any fights. I did get picked up in an off-limits bar but it was the one time I made the trip across the harbor in a water taxi. I was with my pilot and flight engineer. We were in a club not bothering anybody when the Apes, as we called the air police, came in. They spotted us and came over and asked for our ID. They put us in their truck and took us back to the port and put us on a water taxi. An AP truck was waiting to take us back to tent city. They wrote us up and turned the reports over to our commander. I never heard anymore about it but I understand he had a talk with the pilot and engineer.
Our favorite place was a nondescript place in the middle of Lapulapu. My recollection is that the floor was dirt although it may have been concrete. What I most remember are the girls. There was one in particular who became special to me. Her name was Anselma Canales. She went by Selma. Selma was eighteen years old and half-American, or Amerasian although since her father was from South Texas, she was no different than the many Mestizo girls in the islands – girls with Spanish ancestry. Unlike most Amerasian girls, her father acknowledged her and kept in touch with her, sending her pictures of her half-brothers and sisters in Texas. Selma said she was a virgin and I don’t doubt that she was. She took a job in a bar as a hostess so she could meet and get to know Americans. I’ve often wondered what happened to her. As we were leaving Mactan, troops were coming in to be there for a year. I hope she met someone and went back to the States, perhaps to Texas. There was another girl whose father was a Japanese soldier. She was very pretty but I suspect she’d had a hard life as the daughter of a Filipina who had slept with a Japanese.
Just before my crew returned to the States, a new bar opened right outside the main gate. Our flight engineer and I were there one time that I remember. An older Filipino came in with several young Filipins. They were dressed stylishly and were obviously a cut or two above the girls we had met in the bars. My engineer started talking to them and we learned that the man was the uncle of one of the girls and that they were students at the University of Cebu. They wanted to marry Americans. A few years later when I was stationed at Clark I knew a couple of people who had married Filipinas at Mactan. One couple got a wedding present of one million dollars from the girl’s father, who was a wealthy planter.
One Saturday some of us hired motorcycle taxis for a tour of the island. The Honda motorcycle taxis were the primary means of transportation on the islands. Jitneys, converted Jeeps left by the Americans at the end of WW II, were the primary means of transportation elsewhere but Mactan was a small island and there were no bridges to Cebu at the time. The only way to get back and forth was by water taxi and canoe. There may have been a ferry but if so I don’t recall it. The motorcycle taxis were like sampans, except they were motorized. We visited the Magellan monument. It was on the other side of the airfield just off of the bay that bears his name. We rode and walked through what I suppose were rice paddies with dykes in between. We passed by fishing boats, including one large boat with outriggers. We stopped by the guitar factory where I ordered a custom-made guitar with my name on it. I later learned that the USDA wouldn’t allow them to be brought into the United States because Filipinos didn’t finish the inside of the guitars and there was a possibility of wood-boring insects. I never went back to pick it up.
A word about Magellan. The “official” version of his death is that he was going around converting Filipinos to Christianity – meaning he was telling the head men to either convert or lose their heads – but the people on Mactan refused. He landed on the island in an attempt to overcome the locals but in the ensuing battle he was killed. That’s what the history books say. Filipinos, however, tell a different story. They say that Magellan had a fling with Lapulapu’s sister. At least, to him it was a fling but it was evidently more to the young Filipina. When they realized that Magellan was about to sail off and leave the girl in the lurch, as so many sailors of differing nationalities have done since, Lapulapu went after the Portuguese and cut off his head.
In 1965 Mactan was a primitive, idyllic island populated by friendly people who loved Americans. Today it is one massive tourist trap, as illustrated in the TV series. Three bridges now connect the island with Cebu, thus allowing vehicles easy access to the island. Looking at Mactan on Google Earth reveals one resort after another, not only along the beautiful beaches but inland as well. There are museums, spas, golf courses, shopping centers and housing developments. I’m not sure who is responsible for the changes but I believe they were Japanese. The TV series cast occasionally allude to how the island was before the developers came in. The star says he saw it then. I’m just glad I did too.
As I was working on the previous article, some things came to mind. I read numerous articles, including William Bradford Huie’s Look article of his interviews of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam and his more in-depth article Wolf Whistle, in which he referred to his interview of Emmett Till’s mother and other family members, including the cousins who were present at the store. I also purchased and read Mamie Till-Mobley’s memoir as well as numerous internet articles, all of which were written by people who seemed to be convinced that Carolyn Bryant was somehow responsible for Emmett’s death. I also read the 2006 FBI report of their investigation, an investigation that led nowhere. Several things stood out.
Let me start off by saying that Mrs. Mobley said some things in her book – which was written over a half century after he son was murdered – that she represented as fact when they were actually rumor. For instance, she stated that a young college student from Tallahatchie County wrote in his thesis about the Till murder that an attorney told him that the two Negroes Willy Reed claimed to have seen were jailed by the sheriff in another town to prevent them from testifying. (The student practically quoted W.B Huie’s Wolf Whistle article.) This was rumor, not a fact as the FBI report of the investigation in 2005-2006 reveals. In fact, the two men in question said that they were in Clarksdale, Mississippi on a job at the time of the trial. They both denied that they were involved in the abduction and murder in any way. She says that when she saw Emmett’s body, he only had two teeth. When his remains were disinterred and autopsied, he was found to have all of his teeth but one. She also claimed he’d been hit in the head with a hatchet.
Gin fan used to weight Till’s Body
Nothing I have read takes into consideration that Till’s body was being dragged along in the current of the river for three miles and more than three days while being tied to a heavy gin fan to which he had been secured by a length of barbed wire wrapped around his neck. The photo above shows the fan with a link of barbed wire at the top. They most likely tied him to the fan with the back of his head against the fan and the wire under his chin which meant his head was touching the fan. His head would have been banging against that metal fan the entire time. The fan and his body would have bounced off of rocks, logs and other debris as it journeyed the three miles from which it was thrown in the river to the snag where it was found. Much of the battering of his head may have been caused by banging against the fan. The constant pounding could have fractured his skull, which was found with part of it broken away. Milam admitted that he pistol-whipped Till, but he also said he had no intention of killing him. In fact, the pistol was probably loaded – unless he loaded it after he beat him – and it would have been dangerous to have used the pistol with the barrel pointed toward himself.
One thing that struck me is Simeon Wright’s claim that Emmett did nothing wrong yet at the same time he said that one of his older brothers or cousins sent him in the store to get Emmett. If Emmett was doing nothing wrong and hadn’t gone into the store on a dare, why the necessity to get him out of the store and away from Carolyn Bryant? He stated that they wanted to get him out of the store BEFORE he said something. She was used to waiting on Negroes. Why the urgency? Wright claimed Emmett was in the store for less than a minute. How did he know? Surely he wasn’t timing him! One of the women who was outside claimed that she could see in the store and that Emmett didn’t do anything but put his money in Carolyn Bryant’s hand rather than putting it on the counter. She – and others – have claimed that Negroes didn’t put money in the hands of white women but laid it on the counter to avoid touching them. (They could have simply dropped the coins into the clerk’s outstretched hand. Actually, I believe putting money on a counter in front of a clerk rather than in their hand is normal for most people. Thinking back, I realized that’s how I do it.) Did she actually see Emmett grab Carolyn Bryant’s hand as she testified? I don’t know. What I do know is that country stores in the 1950s didn’t have the best lighting. My uncle operated a country store when I was a boy in the fifties and there were several stores around where I grew up. The lighting in the stores was usually a few bare bulbs suspended from the ceiling; they didn’t have fluorescent lighting. The incident occurred sometime after dark, around 7:30-8:00. I’ve never been to Money, Mississippi and never looked in the Bryant store but I doubt that anyone outside would have been able to see much of what was going on inside. They would have to have been just outside the window. If there was a group clustered outside, the question would be why? There must have been a reason they were watching Emmett.
Moses Wright testified that he heard “a lighter voice” outside. His son claimed he later said it was a woman’s voice. Now, there are men with high-pitched voices not unlike a woman. He didn’t claim to have heard a woman’s voice when he testified. Carolyn Bryant Donham has denied being present for the abduction. She told FBI agents that her husband and his brother brought the boy to the store and she told them it wasn’t him. Milam told Huie that Wright himself said he’d “go get him” after they announced they were looking for the boy “who did the talking in Money.” They claimed Emmett Till admitted to being the one. There is an explanation for the contradiction in Mrs. Donham’s account – she was interviewed over a half century after the event. Stories change over the years for a number of reasons. I heard a Federal prosecutor claim in a TV documentary I watched just last night – unrelated to the Till case – that “traumatic” events are etched in our brains. This is not true. I’ve been involved in a number of traumatic events over the years, including some in which I feared for my life. I don’t remember every detail. My recollections are like snapshots, not a video. I have to fill in the blanks to remember what happened.)
Then there is the issue of Curtis Jones, Till’s cousin, who traveled to Mississippi from Chicago at some point after Emmett went down with Preacher Wright. He later became a Chicago police officer. Jones was not a blood relative of Till. His mother was Moses Wright’s oldest daughter from a previous marriage. Curtis was interviewed for a PBS documentary. He stated that he was at the store, that Emmett had been showing a photograph of a white girl and that some of the blacks in front of the store dared him to go inside and ask Carolyn Bryant out. After the documentary came out, some of the Wrights claimed that Jones wasn’t there, that he hadn’t come down from Chicago yet. They convinced him to change his story and he recanted and apologized to Mamie Mobley for making the claim. Was Jones there? Who knows? He said he was then he said he wasn’t – after his relatives told him he wasn’t. Like most of those involved in the incident, he’s dead – he passed away in 2000, three years before Mamie Mobley.
In her book, Mrs. Mobley insinuates that Emmett had patronized the store numerous times before the incident. She claims she talked to him on the phone and he asked her for money, claiming he’d spent the money he took with him, at least $25.00, on candy and treats for his cousins and their friends. She claims he spent the money in Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Store. Carolyn Bryant testified that she’d never seen him before. Now, since he was from Chicago and the blacks in town knew he was from Chicago, it’s doubtful she wouldn’t have recognized him if she had seen him before. (Contrary to the oft-repeated claim that to whites all blacks look alike, whites can identify individual blacks by their facial and physical features just as we identify anyone else.) There were also two other stores in town as well as others in the other small towns around the area. Preacher Wright, who young Emmett was visiting, lived 2.8 miles east of Money. While Money was the closest community to Wright’s home, there were other communities around and the city of Greenwood was less than 10 miles away. The Wrights had a car. I suspect her claim that he spent his money in Bryant’s store is disinformation. Witnesses related to FBI investigators that Emmett had never been in the store before that night.
I also question her claim that she received letters from Emmett before he was abducted. She claims it took three days for a letter to reach her in Chicago from Mississippi. I’m not so sure about that. I grew up about 100 miles northeast of Memphis. I had a lot of pen pals all over Tennessee (mostly girls) including some in Memphis. My recollection is that it took five days for a letter to reach me from Memphis. Unless it is local, mail travels between numerous post offices during its journey from where it was mailed to its destination. Mail from Money would have probably gone to Greenwood where it would have been sorted then sent somewhere else then somewhere else before it was loaded on a train to Chicago where the process would have been repeated. Emmett arrived in Mississippi late on Saturday, August 20. The train trip was fifteen hours and he’d left that morning, meaning he didn’t get to his uncle’s house until early Sunday. The incident in the store occurred on Wednesday, the 24th then he was taken from Wright’s home early on Sunday the 28th. If Mrs. Mobley received mail from him and talked to him as she said she did, it would have to have been AFTER the incident at Bryant’s store, yet she makes no mention of him saying anything about it. There is no doubt that the cousins were concerned about his actions. They later claimed it was the whistle but Bryant and Milam made no mention of a whistle when they went to Wright’s house, they said they wanted the “fat boy from Chicago” who “did the talking down at Money.” Allegedly, Emmett’s cousins wanted him to leave for Chicago immediately and he wanted to go himself but his (great)aunt talked him out of it. She thought it would blow over. One would think he would have told his mother about the incident. Instead, she claimed he was having a ball and wanted to stay in Mississippi. Something does not compute.
It is commonly asserted by civil rights activists that whites hate blacks, especially in the South. I don’t think this is true. The blacks – and whites – that were lynched weren’t lynched because of their skin color, they were lynched because they were believed to have done something, usually murder or rape. Civil rights activists refer to any killing of a black by a white or whites as a “lynching” when, in fact, a lynching is an extra-judicial punishment, meaning it is carried out outside the law. While there is no doubt that some whites, not only in the South but throughout the country – and even the world – considered blacks to be a lower form of humanity, they didn’t hate them. The teaching of evolution started in the 1920s and many came to believe that blacks were further down the evolutionary ladder than whites. But hating blacks? I don’t think so. Not as a general rule. On the other hand, whites in the North resented Southern blacks moving up and competing with them in the job market. Civil rights activists maintain that Emmett Till was killed because of hatred of blacks. No, he was killed because he violated a taboo then, according to W.B. Huie, made the mistake of causing a man who had killed many and had no compunction against killing another to become enraged. Although it was alleged that J.W. Milam had killed Negroes before, the allegation wasn’t true – he’d killed Germans during the war. Huie said in Wolf Whistle that he received thousands of letters from black activists after the Look article. One in particular was from a black woman he knew and respected who chastised him because his article negated their claim that Till was killed because he was black and had whistled at a white woman. Milam told Huie he held no hatred for blacks, that he actually liked them. He maintained that Till had pushed him over a line.
J.W. Milam told Huie that Moses Wright remarked that “he ain’t got good sense” when he and Roy Bryant went to his house to get Emmett Till. Mamie Till-Mobley said in her book that Emmett was a breech birth and that his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. It was also wrapped around his body – she mentions his knee. The doctor had to use forceps to get him out. She commented that his head was misshapen. She also said the doctors told her the boy would have to be institutionalized for the rest of his life, but she doesn’t expound on it. Was the doctor concerned that he had brain damage? Nowhere in her book does she indicate that Emmett had any kind of mental problems but, then again, the book is basically an ode to Emmett Till. If the umbilical cord is wrapped too tightly, it may cut off blood flow and cause damage to the brain. In Emmett’s case, not only was the umbilical cord around him, he had changed positions in the womb and was coming out butt-first, a breech birth. Did Emmett Till suffer some mild brain damage that affected his rationality? Does that explain why J.M. Milam didn’t think the boy was afraid of him, and that he didn’t seem to realize he was going to be killed?
Then there is Willy Reed. Emmett Till’s body was found in the Tallahatchie River in Tallahatchie County. It was assumed that he had been killed in Tallahatchie County, which gave the county jurisdiction over the case. However, it appears that certain black leaders in the area, particularly Dr. T.R.M. Howard, a black surgeon who lived in Mound Bayou, an all-black city some distance north of the area, wanted the case moved to Sunflower County. Howard believed that a Sunflower jury would be more likely to convict Bryant and Milam for Till’s murder. Another of the Milam/Bryant brothers, Leslie Milam, managed the Sturdivant plantation in Sunflower County. Desperate to find witnesses for the prosecution, Howard located 18-year-old Willy Reed who claimed he had seen J.W. Bryant’s green and white 1955 Chevrolet pickup with four whites in the front and three blacks in the back. He claimed one of the blacks was Emmett Till based on a photograph of Till that he saw in the newspaper. He also claimed that he had passed by Leslie Milam’s barn and had heard sounds that he took to be of someone being beaten. He claimed he saw J.W. Milam come out of the barn and get a drink of water from a well. Howard found a couple of other witnesses, all connected to Reed, who claimed to have seen the truck. Law enforcement from Sunflower County, possibly accompanied by Dr. T.R.M. Howard, searched the barn for evidence that Till had been beaten and murdered there but found none.
There is no way to determine if Reed’s testimony was true. There is no doubt that Howard promised to get him out of Mississippi and move him to Chicago if he testified. Howard apparently believed Reed’s testimony would cause the judge to declare a mistrial, which would have opened the door for Sunflower County to prosecute the two men. For some reason the judge did not declare a mistrial even though Reed’s testimony indicated that the murder had taken place in Sunflower, not Tallahatchie. Perhaps the judge did not believe Reed, who knows? Reed did leave Mississippi and moved to Chicago where he suffered a nervous breakdown soon after he arrived. Dr. Howard also left Mississippi and moved to Chicago where he got involved in politics as a Republican. He founded a hospital. After he recovered from his nervous breakdown, Willy Reed became a medical orderly. Incidentally, Mamie Till-Mobley doubted Willy’s testimony.
The autopsy also revealed something interesting. Pieces of metal were found in the head that investigators determined was 7 ½ or 8 shot – birdshot. The small shot – 00 buckshot is the largest – was loaded into light-loaded shotgun shells for hunting quail and doves. FBI investigators found that Remington Arms had produced .45-calibers for an Air Force contract. The Air Force wanted to put the cartridges in survival kits for crash survivors to shoot birds. Whether the cartridges were sold on the civilian market is not discussed in the FBI report. They would have been useful for killing rats in barns and warehouses. (I shot a lot of .22 cartridges loaded with birdshot at pests, mostly English sparrows. The sparrows nested under the eaves of our house and brought in mites.) That Milam had loaded his pistols with birdshot is an indication he did not intend to kill Till. The tiny shot are too small to do serious harm to anything but birds and small animals at normal ranges. A shot at close range, however, has the power to penetrate the skull while the load is still together and under the maximum power of the charge, as evidently happened with Emmett Till. Had Milam intended to kill the boy who “done the talking down at Money,” he’d have loaded his gun with cartridges containing bullets rather than shot. He evidently didn’t tell Milam and his attorney that his gun was loaded with birdshot.
The autopsy also revealed that rumors that had been spread were not true. One “witness” claimed there were as many as a dozen white spectators who sat on benches in Leslie Milam’s barn. He claimed they had drilled holes in Till’s skull with a brace and bit; he claimed other injuries. The autopsy revealed no such wounds. There seems to have been a lot of rumors spread around the Money area and possibly in Chicago as well, rumors such as the claim that the two blacks who worked for Milam and were alleged to have taken part in the crime were held by the sheriff in the Charleston, Mississippi jail. It was just that, a rumor, but Mamie Mobley repeated it in her book as fact.
I don’t recall when I first heard about Emmett Till. I was almost ten when he was killed. My family took the Memphis Commercial Appeal and I read it cover-to-cover. We also took Look as well as Life, as did my grandparents (or my aunt or uncle who lived in their house.) I don’t recall any discussion of the case by my parents or my uncles. My parents were sympathetic to the plight of blacks at the time (they changed their views, or my father did, after the civil rights movement became more prevalent.) One of my closest friends growing up was ostracized by some of our classmates for making some comments about how blacks were mistreated. They called her a nigger-lover. I was mortified when some of my classmates insulted some blacks I knew from the window of our school bus. They were about nine at the time. They had older brothers and sisters. I’m sure they got it from them. I don’t remember any discussion of Emmett Till at school, none at all. It was a long time ago.
A few weeks ago a “woke” academic named Timothy Tyson unscrupulously “released” the unpublished memoir of now 88-year-old Carolyn Bryant, the then 21-year-old 5’2”, 103-pound white storekeeper at the center of the incident that led to the beating and shooting of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy in Money, Mississippi in 1955 and the acquittal of his killers at trial a little over a month later. The death of the teenager has been a major focal point of civil rights leaders and black activists ever since. Most blame Mrs. Bryant for what happened, mainly because she’s the only one still alive. Numerous attempts have been made to have her indicted, well, for something! None have succeeded. Although the memoir has not been released to the public – members of the media have read it and “’splain’ed” it to the rest of us without letting us read it and decide for ourselves – excerpts reveal that Mrs. Bryant, now Mrs. Donham, never recanted her account of what happened as Tyson claimed in a 2017 book he wrote about Till. He obtained the memoir from Mrs. Donham in 2008 when he interviewed her for his book about Till and submitted it to the University of North Carolina archives after promising that it would not be released to the public until 2036.[1] Tyson reneged on his word after “researchers,” actually members of Till’s family, recently came across a 67-year-old warrant against Mrs. Bryant in a box in a Mississippi courthouse basement.
Activists claim the document is justification for arresting the elderly woman on the basis that Mississippi has no statute of limitations for kidnapping. Tyson claims the memoir is “evidence” and decided to hand copies to the media. However, it’s not new – he gave a copy to the FBI more than a decade ago. At some point, Tyson went to the FBI and claimed that Mrs. Donham had recanted. They opened a new investigation. However, the FBI determined that there was no way to prove his claim. FBI agents interviewed Mrs. Donham and she denied that she had ever recanted and added no new information. Furthermore, the FBI found holes in Tyson’s explanation of his claims. The investigation was closed. The FBI also determined that even if Mrs. Donham lied in the testimony she had given more than a half century before – the judge refused to allow her to testify before the jury – they didn’t have jurisdiction to prosecute and neither did the state of Mississippi since the statute of limitations on perjury had expired in 1960.[2] They had no basis to open a hate crime investigation because the murder had occurred long before such legislation became law.
The recent investigation was the second attempt to have Mrs. Donham indicted. The first was in 2004 after the death of Emmett Till’s mother and publication of her memoir when family members convinced the FBI to open an investigation on the basis that others had been involved in the abduction and murder of Till besides the two men who were tried and acquitted – then later admitted the killing in interviews with Alabama investigative reporter William Bradford Huie. The FBI report is available on the FBI web site. I have read the report. There’s little evidence in it, if any. Most of it is nothing but hearsay. Some is interviews of people (2) who were present outside the store. One was Simeon Wright, who evidently was one of those who went to Mississippi to press to have the case reopened, the other was a female cousin who was present at the store. Wright, who was 12 at the time, claimed he was the one who went in the store and got Till. He claims Till was only in the store alone with Mrs. Bryant for “less than a minute” but offers no proof of how he made this determination. However, the accounts they gave differ substantially from what investigative reporter William Bradford Huie was told in Chicago a few months after the incident.
In the late summer of 1955, the black community was shocked at the news that a young Chicagoan named Emmett Till had been brutally murdered in Mississippi. News of the boy’s death was picked up by black newspapers and magazines and photographs were published of his battered body. Blacks in Chicago were incensed. They became even more incensed when the two men arrested for his kidnapping and murder, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, Bryant’s half-brother, were acquitted by an all-white jury at their trial in Sumner, Mississippi the following month. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) made the murdered teenager a poster boy for their civil rights campaign and newspapers ran countless editorials decrying the verdict. Over the past sixty-seven years, black activists, journalists, film makers, Till’s relatives and “historians” have done their best, with great success, to revise the story to suit their own purposes.
The NAACP was hated by many whites, especially in the Mid-South. The organization was founded in 1909 by a consortium of progressive whites, many of them professed socialists, and blacks. Included among the founders were W.E.B. Dubois, a black socialist who eventually left the United States and joined the Communist Party, and Ida B. Wells. Ida Wells was born in 1862 in Holly Springs, a town in north Mississippi just south of Memphis, Tennessee. After the Civil War, her father became a member of the Loyal League, a black vigilante group founded by free blacks who came South after the Civil War, who harassed their white neighbors, particularly former Confederates. Although a child, Wells was active in the League, which was largely responsible for the rise of the Ku Klux Klan. She lost her parents to yellow fever as a teenager and moved to Memphis where she continued her radical antiracial activities. She became a newspaper publisher, publishing articles designed to inflame racial hatred. She frequently wrote about lynching after three black men that she knew were hung. They were lynched after a mob broke them out of the Memphis jail. However, the piece that led to Wells being run out of Memphis was one she wrote in which she essentially said that white women craved sex with black men.[3] She had conveniently left town and gone to New York “on vacation” before the piece ran. A few days after it came out, the newspaper office was burned to the ground. Wells never went back. She remained in the North and continued her campaign against lynching. The NAACP gained little support in the South until a black woodcutter named Elle Persons (or Parsons) was burned to death in 1917 by an angry mob after he was arrested for the brutal murder of a young white teenager named Antionette Rappel. The pretty fifteen-year-old high school student left home for school one morning and never came home. Her body was later found in a woods a half mile from Persons’ home. Her head had been cut off with an ax and there was evidence she had been raped. Persons confessed to the murder but many, blacks in particular, believed the confession was coerced. After Persons was taken off a train and burned to death in front of a large crowd, the NAACP was finally successful in forming a chapter in Memphis. NAACP chapters soon sprang up throughout the South, including Mississippi.
Emmett Louis “Bobo” Till was a fourteen-year-old Negro from Chicago whose relatives had gone “straight north” from Mississippi. In the summer of 1955 he was invited by his great-uncle (by marriage), Moses, or Mose, “Preacher” Wright to spend time in Mississippi, where his mother had been born, to see what it was like.[4] Although articles about Till focus on his youth, most leave out that he was big for his age. Wright testified that the stocky five foot, five inch teenager “looked like a man.” In her memoir, Carolyn Bryant Donham says she thought he was in his late teens or early twenties when he came in her store. Although apologists, including his mother, claim he wasn’t a smart-aleck, he was described as one by some. She even hinted at it in her description of what she told him before he left on the trip. At the time of his death, he was living in the South Side of Chicago in a predominantly or all-black neighborhood. He and his mother lived on the second floor of a two-family home owned by his grandmother. In South Side, he was part of a culture characterized by fast-talking and violence. He had not lived in South Side all his life, though. His mother was from Argo, a predominately white community just west of Chicago, and Emmett lived there off and on for much of his childhood. He had polio as a child and had a stutter as a result. Preacher Wright testified that he was difficult to understand. However, Carolyn Bryant testified that he spoke clearly. Wright also allegedly told his abductors that the boy “don’t have good sense. He didn’t know what he was doing.”
Young Emmett did not spend all of his time in South Side, however. He had family and friends in Argo, where his mother grew up, a community that had become part of the village of Summit. Named for the Argo mill, it is a multi-racial community – the 2000 census showed the population to be 61% white and only 12.5% black, with a number of the people of Polish, German and Irish ancestry. His grandparents had settled there when they came up from Mississippi in the 1920s. Other family members had settled there as well. Moses Wright would settle there when he left Mississippi after the trial of Emmett Till’s accused murders. His mother related in her memoir that from age ten, Emmett road the streetcar to Argo to visit his relatives and friends.
His mother, Mamie Carthan Till-Mobley, claimed later that she warned the boy about his mouth before he left on the trip, advising him that he should be respectful to whites to avoid violence. She told him that Mississippi was not Chicago. She told him to say, “yes sir” and “no sir” and not to smart off.[5] He said he would. He took a train to Mississippi with his great-uncle. Another cousin came down later. When he got to Mississippi, he didn’t take his mother’s advice. Instead of addressing whites with “yes sir” and “no sir” he said “yeah” and “nah.” He regaled his Mississippi cousins and their neighbors with stories about Chicago, allegedly including how he had sex with white girls, a taboo subject in Mississippi. On August 24, he was involved in the incident that led to his murder. Exactly what happened that Wednesday evening is disputed. The accounts given at the time have been challenged by an army of black “historian”/activists and white leftists along with Till’s family, all eager to absolve Till of any blame for what happened. According to contemporary accounts, Carolyn Bryant’s testimony and her memoir, Till made sexual advances toward the 21-year-old white owner of a store in Money.[6]
Carolyn Holloway Bryant was a young married women with two children. She had grown up in Indianola, Mississippi, a town just west of Greenwood. An attractive young woman (she had participated in local beauty contests) of five foot two inches height and weighing 103 pounds, she dropped out of high school at age 17 to marry 20-year-old soldier Roy Bryant whom she had known and been dating since age 14. Roy served in the Army with the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina during the first years of their marriage. He came home in 1953 and took over the store in Money and operated it with his wife. He also drove a truck for one of his brothers.[7] They lived in two rooms in the back of the store with their two small children. Carolyn did not stay overnight at the store when Roy was away, she stayed with relatives. They considered it unsafe for her to be there alone at night. The area teemed with blacks. Some were from sharecropping families, some were employees of local farmers or businessmen like Roy Bryant’s family. The five older children were Milams and the six younger were Bryants. Eight of the siblings were boys and three, Bryants, were girls. Male family members made a living running stores, operating trucks and renting agricultural equipment, particularly cotton pickers, to local farmers. They provided the cotton pickers with black drivers.
Money is a small crossroads community, like so many in rural America, on the eastern side of the rich Mississippi Delta land on the Tallahatchie a few miles north of Greenwood. In 1955 Money consisted of a post office, a filling station, three stores – one of which belonged to the Bryants – a cotton gin and a school. To the east the state becomes hilly and is populated more by small farmers while the Delta is home to the large cotton plantations for which Mississippi is famous. The region once belonged to the Choctaw. They sold their land to the United States in 1831 after the Treaty of Dancing Creek and settlers moved in and established cotton plantations using slave labor. After the Civil War and the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, the slaves who had worked on the plantations remained as farm hands. Some became sharecroppers.[8]
In the 1950s the Mississippi Delta looked like a Third World nation. I grew up in rural West Tennessee about 100 miles northeast of Memphis, which sits in the corner of the state just north of Mississippi. Money is about the same distance south of Memphis. My homeland was rolling hills, river bottoms and woods. We raised cotton as did other farmers – we picked it ourselves – but we only had a few acres.[9] We also raised corn and livestock. The big cotton plantations were west of us in the flat lands east of the Mississippi. Although the West Tennessee bottomlands are technically not part of the Mississippi Delta as it is defined, the land and culture are the same. We had blacks around – they were called “colored people” – but not in large numbers. Most blacks lived in town. I don’t recall there being many black sharecroppers – most sharecroppers in the area were white. Rather, local blacks either worked for the farmers in the region, as domestics working for some of the wealthier families – mostly in town – or had jobs. About once a year my family would drive some 100 miles to Memphis for an outing which usually included a visit to the Memphis Zoo. What struck me was that once we entered the flat Mississippi bottom region between where we lived and Memphis, we started seeing large numbers of what most would call shacks, all occupied by black families.[10] Sometime in the 50s, probably around 1958, my family took a trip to Leesville, Louisiana to visit my aunt and uncle who was in the Army stationed at Fort Polk. Once we got south of Memphis, we were in a different world. We passed mile after mile of ramshackle shotgun houses with black families sitting on the porch or standing around in the yard. It was in the spring and there was no cotton to hoe or pick. Huge cotton fields surrounded the houses. It was like that all the way to Greenville, Mississippi where we crossed the Mississippi River into southeast Arkansas and continued like that as we went south into Louisiana and across the state to Leesville.
I graduated from high school in 1963 and enlisted in the Air Force some two months later. The Army and Air Force induction center was at the VA hospital in Memphis. There were five of us, all white, who had been sent there by our recruiters and a large group of colored boys who had enlisted in the Army or been sent there by their draft boards. Most, if not all, were from Mississippi.[11] We all went through the mandatory enlistment physical and took a battery of tests. One of the Army medics who took us through the process told us that they’d have to send nearly all the blacks home. Either they couldn’t pass the Armed Forces Qualification Test or they had diseases such as syphilis and TB that barred them from military service. He said it was the same every week. (Two years later the Johnson Administration ordered the military to start accepting men with substandard scores. They called it Project 100,000 – it was a disaster.) Such were the kinds of young blacks often found in the Mississippi Delta. It was not the kind of place where a white woman should be alone, especially after dark.
Mississippians and other Southerners were well aware that there were different classes of blacks, an awareness dating back to slavery when slaves performed various functions. Some were “house Negroes” who worked in the plantation houses as servants, some were craftsman who worked as carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, seamstresses and the like and some were “field Negroes” who were only capable of menial tasks, namely plowing, hoeing cotton in the spring and picking it in the fall. During slavery, slaves in the upper categories looked down on the field hands. They also looked down on the “white trash” who lived nearby and were barely getting by.[12] After slavery ended, blacks in the craftsman classes moved into towns where they continued their craft. A few became educated. The field hands mostly remained on the plantations. There were also classes of whites: the well-educated professionals such as doctors, lawyers, bankers and teachers; the farmers and businessmen who were successful but not well-educated; then the “white trash” – landless whites with no prospects. The so-called “white trash,” also sometimes called rednecks or peckerwoods, were often descendants of children and young adults who were brought to the English colonies as indentured servants then at the end of their indenture were released with the equivalent of fifty dollars and no prospects. They became hired hands and sharecroppers and were in competition with blacks.
A word about sharecropping. Although black activists try to claim it was unique to the American South, it had actually been around for centuries and was common in the Midwest and West as well as Europe. Not all sharecroppers were black. Many were white. Sharecropping was basically farming in which a wealthier individual or family provides the land, equipment, seed and fertilizer and the sharecropper provides the labor. The landowner provided the sharecropper’s family a house in which to live as well as land on which they could grow a garden and raise livestock. They even provided mules or horses and plows, then later a tractor and equipment to till the land they were sharecropping. On large plantations, the landowners often provided supplies through a store they owned. They sold groceries, farm supplies and other commodities to the sharecroppers on credit. They even provided medical care. Their debt was taken out of the sharecropper’s share of the crop. The Bryants’ store was not a “company store,” they were merchants who sold to their mostly black customers on credit, as was common throughout the South and Midwest. They operated on credit themselves. They mainly sold groceries and meats but also had a candy counter. The main counter with the cash register was at the back. Although various articles and books about the store don’t say so, they probably made sandwiches, usually bologna, for their customers – the stores I am familiar with did. Roy Bryant had set up checker boards in front of the store where blacks congregated. He sometimes played checkers himself and let the young Negroes buy cold drinks on credit.
Emmett Till’s mother Mamie was evidently intelligent and capable. Although she was born in Mississippi, her family moved to Illinois when she was two as part of the “Great Migration” when millions of blacks moved out of the South. (Although blacks claim so many left the South due to the threat of lynching and lack of economic opportunity, it was more the latter than the former. Not only did blacks leave the South, so did millions of whites, far more than blacks.) She was an honors student at a predominantly white school in Argo, Illinois and only the fourth black student to actually graduate from it.[13]Emmett’s father, Louis Till, however, was either not intelligent or he had something about him that made him violent. There is no information about Louis Till’s background other than that he was allegedly an orphan in New Madrid, Missouri, a Mississippi River town south of St. Louis. How and when he made his way to the Chicago area isn’t recorded. Mamie met Louis when he was seventeen and employed at a corn mill in Argo, Illinois where her father had worked prior to her parents’ divorce and his move to Detroit. She said he had just come up from Missouri but offers no details. She claimed that her parents didn’t approve of Till and she broke off the relationship, but he persisted.[14] They were married in 1940; both were age eighteen. Emmett was born within a year. The marriage didn’t last long. Louis became violent. One night he pounced on her she continued to eat some greens her mother had sent over after he told her not to – Louis did not like his mother-in-law. He got her on the floor and choked her to the point she almost passed out. She retaliated by dousing him with hot water when he came in later that night. She got a restraining order which he repeatedly violated. In 1943 he went into the Army, allegedly because a judge told him to either enlist or go to jail. Mamie was notified after the war that Louis had been executed for “willful misconduct.”
Little Emmett grew up essentially without a father but he did have male influences in his life in the form of great-uncles and cousins then later his mother’s boyfriend, Gene Mobley. He never really knew his father because he left while he was a small child and never came back. Whether he knew he had been executed is unknown. His mother indicated that he didn’t. He only had one grandfather who was only peripherally involved in his life. His mother remarried a man named Mallory in 1946 but the marriage didn’t last long. Mamie’s first job was at an aeronautics school but she got a civil service job as a clerk at an Air Force procurement office in downtown Chicago. She moved to Detroit and lived with her father, who had moved there after he and her mother divorced. She worked as a clerk at a military induction center while in Detroit. Her mother was a strict Church of God in Christ holiness but her father liked to play the piano and sing In clubs. One day he walked out and didn’t come back. She was eleven. She was almost thirty when she reunited with him in Detroit. She married a man named Pink Bradley in Detroit in 1951 but the marriage only lasted two years. Emmett wasn’t around him much. The little boy didn’t like living in Detroit so he went back to Argo to live with his great-uncle and aunt.[15] He lived with them in Argo until his mother returned from Detroit with Pink Bradley. His grandmother had sold her house in Argo. She and Mamie bought a two-flat house in South Side Chicago. Mamie quit her job in Detroit and they moved to Chicago and into the second floor of her mother’s building. Pink went with them. Mamie’s mother got him a job at Corn Products in Argo. She got another civil service job with the Social Security Administration. However, Pink would take Mamie’s car and drive back to Detroit every weekend, to see his mother, he said. She learned he was seeing a woman named Margaret and threw him out of the house. After she divorced Bradley, he would sometimes come to visit. Although they had got along while Mamie was married to him, Emmett no longer liked the man. When Pink stopped by for a visit in Chicago and started in on Mamie, Bo, who was sick in bed with the flu, got out of bed and grabbed a kitchen knife. He said to Pink, “if you put your hands on my mother, I will CUT you!” He was eleven at the time. Mamie’s job with Social Security wasn’t panning out. She was working a lot of overtime but couldn’t get promoted. She either returned to her old Air Force job or took a new one. She was moved into a new position working with classified files.[16]
After they moved to South Side, Emmett was enrolled at McCosh Elementary, an all-black school. (Class photos show no white students.) He was described as an average student. He had completed eighth grade when he left for Mississippi and would have been a ninth-grader when he got back. Yet even though they were living in South Side Chicago and he was attending school there. Emmett spent much of his time, most of his weekends, in Argo. His mother relates in her memoir that he started taking a streetcar to Argo when he was only ten years old! She relates accounts of things he did in Argo, such as playing baseball, but she had no idea what else he and his cousins, some of whom were two years or more older than him, were doing. She was working fulltime for the Federal government in downtown Chicago. Emmett was tending to the house and cooking for her during the week but there’s no telling what he was doing on the weekends when he was an hour away in Argo.
The various accounts on the internet focus solely on the Tills and provide no background at all on the whites who were involved. There’s reason for this – Emmett Till has become an industry for some historians, writers, journalists and some of his relatives. They want the focus on him and his mother and don’t want anyone to know anything about J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, because J.W. Milam was a sure enough bona fide war hero and a man not to be trifled with. He had enlisted in the Army in 1941 and served in North Africa and Europe with the 2nd Armored Division, then transferred to the 75th Division. Even though he only had a ninth grade education, he was awarded a battlefield commission which explains the transfer – men who were commissioned from the ranks were normally required to transfer to a different unit. He was wounded by shrapnel – seventeen pieces struck him in the chest. An FBI report of the 2004-2006 investigation only acknowledges that he had a Purple Heart but he was actually highly decorated with a Silver Star, the third-highest US military combat decoration. He probably also had a Bronze Star since he had been awarded the combat infantryman’s badge and the Bronze Star was automatic for anyone with the CIB. This would make him a highly decorated soldier. He held a commission as a first lieutenant in the Army reserve. Known as “Big Milam”, he was a big man with a bald plate and had a reputation as a killer because of his wartime experiences. It was claimed that he had killed Negroes but it wasn’t true. He was also a successful businessman. He owned interests in several stores and some trucks and provided cotton pickers with black drivers to local plantations. He was known as a man who knew how to deal with Negroes. He lived among them. He employed several blacks. Roy Bryant was J.W.’s half-brother. He, too, was a veteran. He had volunteered for the Army in June 1950 at the outbreak of the Korean War and trained as a paratrooper. He served with the 82nd Airborne Division but probably didn’t go overseas – the 82nd remained Stateside at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Roy knew how to fight but he wasn’t a killer like his brother.
Bobo or Bo, as he was called by his family, arrived in Mississippi on August 20, 1955, after a long train ride from Chicago. His uncle lived on a farm just under three miles from Money and sharecropped. It was late August and the cotton fields were coming ripe. Bobo picked a little cotton – 25 pounds – for the first time in his life, but he turned out to be a bust as a cotton picker and his uncle let him go back to the house. He’d only been to Mississippi twice before, the first time as a baby and the second when he was nine.[17] He spent his time with his Mississippi cousins and neighboring teenagers when they weren’t in the fields. Mrs. Mobley related in her book that the family picked cotton in the morning, weighed in at lunch, then picked again until four PM when they weighed in again then went to the house and were free until morning.[18] He was described as a stocky youth who looked older than his fourteen years. He was five foot four or five and weighed 150-160 pounds. Some called him fat. Moses Wright testified that “he looked like a man.” Carolyn Bryant said she took him to be in his late teens or early twenties when he came in her store. In her testimony she referred to him as “a man.”
There are conflicting accounts about a girl, a white girl. Contemporary accounts claim he had a picture of a white girl in his wallet and was showing it around and claiming she was his girlfriend. (His mother later claimed the picture came with the wallet and was of actress Hedy Lamar.) He also claimed he was having sex with her. Later, one of his cousins claimed he had a picture of his integrated class, which is odd since he supposedly went to an all-black school. The explanation is that he went to a summer school and there were some white kids in the class.[19] In 2018 a Chicago woman named Joan Brody told a friend she had known Emmett Till in elementary school and they decided she was the girl in the picture. She was twelve at the time (which would have made her a seventh grader) and Emmett was thirteen. Although she wasn’t Till’s classmate at school, they attended a brief summer class and sat side by side. She was allegedly the only white girl in the class. She denied having sex with him, however. She also said she couldn’t believe he would have told his cousins he had. However, the girl in the photo probably was someone else.
Investigative journalist William Bradford Huie wrote both an article for Look magazine about Bobo’s murder and an expanded account of how he came to investigate the case and some of his actions while researching.[20] After meeting with Milam, Bryant and Mrs. Bryant, he flew to Chicago and talked to Till’s family and friends, including his cousins from Mississippi – and his mother. Preacher Wright and some of his family left Mississippi right after the trial and settled in Argo. They talked candidly. Milam had told Huie Till actually had not one but three pictures of girls in his wallet, one of which he claimed to be his girlfriend. His wallet fell out of his pants and he looked to see what he had and saw the pictures. He also claimed he was having sex with her – he taunted Milam, telling him she “liked it.” Milam told Huie and his attorney, John Whitten, that he became enraged at Till’s taunts and decided to kill him. He’d bragged about the girl to the Mississippi Negroes but the cousins thought he was just bragging, although they told Huie he was “getting close.” They knew where his girlfriend, or the girl he claimed as his girlfriend, lived and took Huie by the house. Huie saw the girl in the yard. So there evidently really was a white girl. Whether it was Joan Brody or someone else remains unclear but it was probably not her. The girl was probably someone he knew in Argo since his cousins knew where she lived. His grandmother lived there and he had lived there off and on. Even after he and his mother moved to South Side Chicago, he often took a streetcar to Argo, a predominantly white community, to see people he knew.[21]
Emmett Till may have been telling the truth. Sex between white girls and black boys in Chicago was not uncommon. It’s not at all impossible for Bobo to have been having sex with a white girl in Chicago regardless of the scoffing by his mother and others who always passed it off with “he was only fourteen!”[22] (Young teenage boys DO have sex! There is an article in today’s New York Post about a case in Tomball, Texas of a teenager who started having sex with his teacher shortly after he turned thirteen and continued having sex with her for the next three years.) They said Till had had sex and that he had sex during his Mississippi visit. He wasn’t a virgin. Although his cousins didn’t believe he had sex with the white girl, it’s possible he had. Black boys having sex with white girls was not uncommon in Chicago and other Northern cities in the 1950s. After all, unless she made it up as later claimed by his relatives, Bobo told Carolyn Bryant that he’d “f—-d a lot of white women.”
Although some of them later recanted, contemporary accounts relate that Bobo’s cousins didn’t believe his stories about having sex with white girls. Neither did other blacks around Money that Till bragged to. One Wednesday evening, August 24, they drove into Money to hang out for a while after having picked cotton. They were on their way to a “joot” – a juke joint – but it hadn’t opened yet so they went to Money to hang out until it did. There were checkerboards in front of the stores – including Bryant’s Grocery which was one of three stores in the community. A group of young blacks, perhaps as many as a dozen, were hanging out in front of the stores when they arrived. Some were a little tired of Bobo’s boasting. Bobo was making one of his claims about having sex with white girls when one of the crowd called him on it. “There’s a pretty white girl in that store over there. Go over and ask her for a date.”
Regardless of whether he was dared or not, Bobo went in Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market. He either went in the store by himself or went in with someone else who left him alone in the store. His cousins acknowledge that he was inside alone with Mrs. Bryant for at least a minute. They stayed outside to watch. A lot can happen in a minute. Evidently, something did.
This is Carolyn Bryant’s testimony in her husband’s murder trial. The judge ordered the jury out of the room then refused to allow it to be admitted as evidence:
NOTE –The so-called “n-word” appears in the transcript. Following is her testimony. I removed the challenges from the prosecution for the sake of brevity. The prosecution did not want the jury to hear an account of what had happened four days before Emmett Till’s abduction.
MRS. ROY BRYANT,
A witness introduced for and on behalf of the defendants,
being first duly sworn, upon her oath testified as follows:
DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. CARLTON (attorney for Bryant and Milam):
Q What is your name, please, ma’am?
A Mrs. Roy Bryant.
Q You are the wife of one of the defendants in this case, the defendant Roy Bryant, is that right?
SMITH: We object, Your Honor. That is incompetent, immaterial and irrelevant.
THE COURT: The objection is overruled.
Q When did he enlist in the Armed Forces?
A In June of 1950.
Q That was about ten months, I believe, before you married?[24]
A Yes.
Q How long did he stay in the service?
A Three years.
Q Did he get out in about June of 1953 then?
A Yes.
Q Now Mrs. Bryant, I direct your attention to Wednesday night, on the 24th day of August, on that evening, who was in the store with you?
The prosecution objected. There (was) a discourse between the attorneys and the judge, who instructed the jury to leave the courtroom. The judge then allowed her testimony to continue.
Q Mrs. Bryant, on Wednesday evening or Wednesday night, the 24th day of August, 1955, did anyone — who was in the store with you that night?
A No one.
Q You were alone in the store at the time?
A Yes.
Q Was there anyone in the living quarters at the rear of the store?
A Yes.
Q Who was back there?
A Mrs. Milam and her two children and also our two children.
Q Did any incident occur in that store on that evening which made an impression on you?
A Yes.
Q And what time of the evening was that?
A About eight o’clock.
Q Was that before or after dark?
A After dark.
Q Just tell the Court what happened there at that time, please, ma’am.
A This nigger man came in the store and he stopped there at the candy case.[25]
Q And in the store, where is the candy case located?
A At the front of the store.
Q And on which side is it?
A It is on the left side as you go in.
Q And that is the first counter there, is that right?
A Yes, Sir.
Q Now, is the store, with reference to that candy counter, is there anything back of the candy counter towards the wall of the store?
A No.
Q Is there any place to walk there or anything of that sort?
A Yes, an aisle.
Q When this negro man came in the store, where were you in the store?
A I was farther back in the store, behind the counter.
Q Where were you in the store when this man came in?
A I was farther back behind the counter.
Q Were you on the same side or on the other side?
A The same side.
Q And when he came in, I believe you said he stopped in front of the candy counter, is that right?
A Yes.
Q And what did you do then?
A I walked up to the candy counter.
Q And what transpired up there at the candy counter?
A I asked him what he wanted.
Q And did he tell you?
A Yes.
Q Do you know what it was he asked for?
A No.
Q And did you then get the merchandise for him?
A Yes. I got it and put it on top of the candy case.
Q And what did you do then?
A I held my hand out for his money.
Q Which hand did you hold out?
A My right hand.
Q Will you show the Court how you held your hand out?
A I held out my hand like this (demonstrating by holding out her hand).
Q Which hand was that?
A My right hand.
Q And will you show the Court how you did that?
A Like this (demonstrating by holding out her hand).
Q And did he give you the money?
A No.
Q What did he do?
A He caught my hand.
Q Will you show the Court just how he grasped your hand?
A Like this (demonstrating with her hand).
Q By what you have shown us, he held your hand by grasping all the fingers in the palm of his hand, is that it?
A Yes.
Q And was that a strong grip or a light grip that he had when he held your hand?
A A strong grip.
Q And will you show the Court what you did? How did you get loose?
A Well, I just jerked it loose, like this (demonstrating).
Q It was about that difficult to get loose, was it?
A Yes.
Q And it was with that much difficulty that you got your hand loose?
A Yes.
Q Just what did he say when he grabbed your hand?
A He said, “How about a date, baby?”
Q When you freed yourself, what happened then?
A I turned around and started back to the back of the store.
Q You did what?
A I turned to get to the back of the store.
Q Did you do anything further then?
A Yes. He came on down that way and he caught me at the cash register.
Q You say he caught you?
A Yes.
Q How did he catch you?
A Well, he put his left hand on my waist, and he put his other hand over on the other side.
Q How were you going down along the counter there? Did he approach you from the front, or from the rear or how?
A From the side.
Q Now, Mrs. Bryant, will you stand up and put my hands just where he grasped you? Will you show the Court and jury?
A It was like this (demonstrating by putting Mr. Carlton’s hands on her body).
Q He grabbed you like that, did he?
A Yes.
Q In other words, with his left arm around your back?
A Yes.
Q And his left hand on your left hip?
A Yes.
Q And he had his right hand on your right hip?
A Yes.
Q Did he say anything to you then at the time he grabbed you there by the cash register?
A Yes.
Q What did he say?
A He said, “What’s the matter, baby? Can’t you take it?
Q He said, “What’s the matter, baby? Can’t you take it?”
A Yes.
Q Did you then try to free yourself?
A Yes.
Q Was it difficult? Did you succeed in freeing yourself?
A Yes.
Q Did he say anything further to you at that time?
A Yes.
Q What did he say?
A He said, “You needn’t be afraid of me.”
Q And did he then use language that you don’t use?
A Yes.
Q Can you tell the Court just what that word begins with, what letter it begins with?
A The witness did not answer verbally, but shook her head negatively.)
Q In other words, it is an unprintable word?
A Yes.
Q Did he say anything after that one unprintable word?
A Yes.
Q And what was that?
A Well, he said — well — “With white women before.”
Q When you were able to free yourself from him, what did you do then?
A Then this other nigger came in the store and got him by the arm.
Q And what happened then?
A And then he told him to come on and let’s go.
Q Did he leave the store willingly or unwillingly?
A Unwillingly.
Q How did the other negro get out of the store then? How did they leave?
A He had him by the arm and led him out.
Q Were there any white men in the store at the time this occurred?
A No.
Q Were there any other negro men in the store at the time?
A No.
Q Were there any other persons outside the store?
A Yes.
Q Were they white men or colored men?
A Colored.
Q Were there a number of them out there? How many of them were out there?
A Oh, about eight or nine.
Q When he went out the door, did he say anything further after he had made these obscene remarks?
A Yes. He turned around and said, “Good-by.”
Q And when he got out the door, what did you do?
A I called to Mrs. Milam to watch me and then I ran out the door to go to the car.
Q Which car did you go to?
A Mrs. Milam’s.
Q What did you go to the car for?
A For my pistol.
Q Where was your pistol in the car?
A Under the seat.
Q It was under which seat?
A The driver’s seat.
Q As you went out the door and went to the car, did you see this man again?
A Yes.
Q Where was he then? Where was he standing?
A He was standing by one of the posts on the front porch.
Q Your store has a front porch to it?
A Yes.
Q And these posts are on the front porch?
A Yes.
Q Did he say or do anything at that time?
A He whistled and then came out in the road.
Q Can you give a sound something like the whistle that he made there? Was it something like this? (Mr.
Carlton demonstrated by giving two low whistles.)
A Yes.
Q When you got your pistol, Mrs. Bryant, where was this boy then? Or I should say where was this man?
A When I turned around, he was getting in a car down the road.
Q Did you rush back in the store then?
A Yes.
Q Had you ever seen that man before?
A No.
Q Have you ever seen him since?
A No.
Q Tell us what size man he was. Describe about how tall he was.
A He was about five feet, six inches tall.
Q And that is about four inches taller than you are, is that right?
A Yes.
Q And how much would you say that he weighed?
A Around one hundred and fifty pounds.
Q Did he walk with any defect?
A No.
Q Did he have any speech defect?
A No.
Q Did you have any trouble understanding him?
A No.
Q What sort of impression did this occurance make on you?
A I was just scared to death.
Q Mrs. Bryant, do you generally know the negroes in that community around Money?
A Yes.
Q What kind of store is it that you run there?
A It is just a general store.
Q Are most of your customers negroes or white people?
A Most of them are negroes.
Q And of course, you come in contact with most of the negroes around there in that way?
A Yes.
Q And you know most of them around there, do you?
A Yes.
Q And was this man one of those?
A No.
Q Did he talk with a southern or northern brogue?
A The northern brogue.
Q Did you have any difficulty understanding him?
A No.
Q Did you have any white men anywhere around there to protect you that night?
A No.
Q Was your husband out of town?
A Yes.
Q Do you know where he was?
A He was in Brownsville.
Q What was his purpose in being away from home then?
A He had carried a load of shrimp there.
Q Where had he started out with that load of shrimp?
A From New Orleans.
Q When did you expect him home?
A I didn’t know.
Q What was the reason for Mrs. Milam and the children being there with you?
A So that I wouldn’t be alone.
1. CARLTON: Now, we submit, Your Honor, that the testimony here is competent on the basis of the testimony which was introduced by the State to show that there was some talk in Money, and to remove from the minds of the jury the impression that nothing but talk had occurred there.
THE COURT: The Court has already ruled, and it is the opinion of the Court that this evidence is not admissible.
(The jury returned to the courtroom, and the proceedings
continued with the jury present.)
Till apologists claim that Mrs. Bryant “lied” in her testimony because she had talked to one of her husband’s attorneys previously and hadn’t mentioned that he had laid his hands on her or his words about his sexual experiences with white women. This is simple to explain. First, they base this claim on a “statement” she allegedly gave that was later found in Huie’s notes. This was probably not a sworn statement; it was not a statement to law enforcement but to an attorney and was not a deposition. Second, what people tell an attorney and what they later testify to in court are often different. There is also another explanation – Carolyn Bryant had been severely traumatized by the experience and she simply didn’t want to talk about it. She hadn’t wanted her husband to know what had happened because she feared he would do something to Till. Now he was in jail awaiting trial for his murder. Those who claim she “lied” are merely voicing their own opinion and point to the difference in the two statements as “proof.” They cannot explain why she felt threatened and ran outside to get the pistol.
The following is an excerpt from Carolyn Bryant Donham’s memoir. Although the complete manuscript hasn’t been published on the internet, excerpts have. This is her description of what occurred in Brytan’s Store:
The FBI report on the 2004-2006 investigation is heavily redacted and does not give the names of people who were then living, but there is one account that seems to relate that Juanita Milam later claimed she didn’t believe Carolyn’s story and thought she might have made it up in order to convince her husband not to go off and leave her alone in the store.[26] However, this doesn’t make sense because Roy was on trial for murder when she testified. She claimed she thought she was in Greenwood and wasn’t baby-sitting Carolyn’s kids. She WAS in Greenwood that weekend when the abduction occurred. She did not make a statement at the trial. More than likely, Mrs. Milam’s memory was confused since the event had occurred a half-century earlier. The investigation was in 2004-2006. By that time Carolyn and Roy Bryant had been divorced for a quarter century.[27] Whether or not she and Juanita remained in contact is unknown. Juanita passed away in 2014. Her husband, J.W. Milam, died in 1980.
Carolyn followed the two boys out the door. She ran to her brother-in-law’s car and reached in and got the pistol out from under the front seat. At some point Bobo let out a “wolf whistle.” His cousins definitely believed it was aimed at the white woman.[28] One of them saw that she had the pistol and shouted, “Come on, we got to get out of here!” They eventually ended up at Preacher Wright’s place, at least some of them did. Wright was told or somehow learned what happened although not in detail. He wanted Bobo to catch the next train headed north. Bobo himself reportedly was frightened and wanted to go home but Wright’s wife, his grandmother’s sister, convinced him to stay. She said it would all blow over. Just what they knew is not known. They may have only known about the whistle since there were no witnesses in the store to hear what was said. One of the older cousins told Huie he ran inside when he saw Bobo put his hands on Mrs. Bryant and pulled him out of the store.[29] This may have been Maurice Wright, who was sixteen at the time.
Carolyn told her sister-in-law Juanita what had happened but they agreed not to tell her husband when he came by to escort them home later. Roy Bryant, Carolyn’s husband, was off on a trip in a truck hauling shrimp to Texas and wouldn’t be back until Saturday. Even though the two women remained silent, word started getting around. There were other people on the streets who saw and heard the wolf whistle and saw Carolyn come running out of the store to get the gun. It seems to have been circulating only among the black population because J.W. Milam, Juanita’s husband, wasn’t aware of it. Had any whites known about the incident, he surely would have been informed.
From all indications, Roy found out about the incident before he went home, probably from one of the colored men who worked for his brother. Blacks claimed there was a “Judas nigger” who told Bryant. Some believed it was Maurice Wright but his family denied that it was him. Maurice became estranged from his family and died an alcoholic. He talked to Carolyn about it. Just how much she told him is unknown as is how much he had already been told. When he learned what happened, he knew he had to do something or he’d be a laughingstock for not taking some kind of action against the person who had insulted his wife. He decided his only option was to whip the Chicago Negro to avoid losing the respect of his black customers. Later that night he called J.W. and told him he needed him to do something for him but J.W. said he was busy. He explained what had happened and J.W. said he’d be over as soon as he closed the store where he was working sometime after midnight. Sometime around 2 AM they showed up at Preacher Wright’s house. Wright knew why they were there. Bryant identified himself and said they were there to talk to the boy from Chicago who had “done the talking” down at Money. There was no mention of a whistle. Reporters and blacks later claimed Till died “because he whistled at a white woman.”
Wright said he’d get him.[30] He took them to where Bobo was sleeping with his cousins. He was in bed with Simeon Wright, Preacher’s 12-year-old son. Wright begged Milam not to take the boy, he said “he ain’t got good sense” and didn’t know what he was doing. Wright’s wife offered to pay for any damages. Milam told her to go back to bed. Wright would later testify that a third man waited on the porch and that he thought he was colored. After they took the boy outside, Wright claimed they heard them ask someone “Is this him?” and a voice responded that it was. He claimed the voice was “lighter than a man’s” which has led to much speculation that Carolyn Bryant was with them and somehow culpable in the kidnapping.[31] After they left, Wright waited around for some time trying to decide what to do. He finally drove somewhere and filled his car up with gas. He eventually went to his brother-in-law and told him; the brother-in-law took him to the sheriff.[32] One of the boys visiting from Chicago went to a white neighbor and called his mother, who notified Mamie, who went by Mamie Bradley. They called the Chicago police, who started calling Mississippi sheriffs.
Was Emmett Till not right in the head? Wright did not mention making the comment in the trial but J.W. Milam claimed he said it. There is a distinct possibility that he was not. He was born in a breech birth, with his butt coming out first, and his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. It’s possible he was brain-damaged. The doctors apparently thought he was. They told Mrs. Till (Mamie) her baby had problems and would probably have to be institutionalized for life.
Somebody, probably Moses Wright, swore out a warrant for Roy Bryant and possibly J.W. Milam for kidnapping. Evidently a warrant was also sworn out for Carolyn Bryant but never served.[33] In her memoir, Mrs. Till-Mosely, as she later identified herself, said the sheriff told her they had Bryant and Milam and were looking for Carolyn Bryant.[34] Roy Bryant was arrested at the store on Sunday afternoon based on what Preacher Wright told the sheriff and carried to jail. Milam was not arrested at the time but he came to the jail later and turned himself in. The two men were charged with kidnapping but were never indicted. Bryant admitted that they took the boy from Wright’s but he said they had taken him to the store and showed him to Carolyn. She said it wasn’t him and they set him free. But Bobo hadn’t been seen since so they kept them in jail until a grand jury could meet. Everything changed when a fisherman spotted some feet sticking out of the water in the Tallahatchie River the following Wednesday. The body was badly swollen from having been in the river for three days but Moses Wright thought it was Emmett Till mainly because of a ring that was found on the body.[35] The ring has the initials “L.T.” inscribed inside. Emmett’s mother later said the ring was the only thing the Army sent her from her estranged husband’s effects. The kidnapping was now a murder.
Because the body was found in Tallahatchie County, jurisdiction switched to there from LeFlore County where Money is located and where Preacher Wright lived. An 18-man grand jury indicted Bryant and Milam for murder. They were tried a month later in Sumner, the county seat of Tallahatchie County – and were acquitted. Although the outcome was never in doubt, the prosecution had no witnesses to the murder and all evidence was circumstantial. The sheriff who saw the body said it was unidentifiable. A local embalmer said the body had been in the water at least ten days. The black press went ballistic, and the furor was joined by other media. Bobo’s mother had called the black media in to see the boy’s battered face before the funeral. They accused the authorities in Mississippi, perhaps with some justification, of looking the other way.[36] They claimed a white man would never be convicted of murdering a black in Mississippi. Some ranted that Bobo’s father had died fighting for freedom in Europe and his son could not find justice in racist Mississippi. Headlines claimed that Bobo had been murdered for “wolf whistling at a white woman” and the killers had been found not guilty.
Alabama native William Bradford Huie was a highly respected journalist. Born in 1910, he graduated with honors from the University of Alabama in 1930 and began a career in journalism. He sold his first story to True magazine while still in college. After working at several newspapers, he went to work for H.L. Mencken at Mercury Magazine. He served as a Naval officer in World War II, then returned to Mercury where he became editor. He authored numerous books and novels, several of which were made into movies. One of his books was about the execution of Private Eddie Slovik, the only US soldier escorted for desertion in World War II. During a visit to an office in the Pentagon he “obtained” a key to the numbers on the graves in the cemetery in France where Slovik was buried. Later on, when people started claiming that Bobo’s father died “for freedom”, he remembered the key and found that Louis Till was buried three graves from Slovik. He and another black soldier were executed after being found guilty of raping two Italian women and murdering another during an air raid. Although this was immaterial as far as Emmett Till was concerned, the prosecution had introduced Louis Till’s death when they put Mamie Bradly on the stand. They asked her about Emmett’s father and she answered that he had died in the service in the European Theater on July 2, 1945. The defense had no idea that he’d been executed for rape and murder and the failed to pick up on the date, which was two months after the war in Europe had come to an end. Mamie may have known that he’d been executed for rape although she later claimed she only knew it was for “willful misconduct.”
Huie, who wasn’t present for the trial, decided to offer Bryant and Milam a payment for the screen rights to their story in anticipation of making a movie about the death of Till and the subsequent trial. Since they had been acquitted, they could not be tried again for Till’s murder because of the double jeopardy clause in the US Constitution. He went to Mississippi and met with John Whitten, who was part of Bryant and Milam’s defense team – it seems that every lawyer in the Greenwood area wanted to defend them. Money poured in for their defense. Some of it came from New York and New Jersey. He asked Whitten if Milam had ever said if he had killed Till; Whitten said he had never asked. Whitten volunteered that Milam was “a killer,” that it was the reason for his battlefield commission. He commented that he was the kind of person you need around for a war. Huie came up with a plan to offer the two men a sum of money for rights to their story. Whitten said he’d ask them. Although he was there on his own, he got LOOK magazine to offer the money in exchange for an exclusive story in the magazine. Huie was criticized by members of the media for what they call “checkpoint journalism” but Huie said it never bothered him – “it gets results.”
Huie told the two men he’d meet with them over five nights and in the daytime he’d go around and verify that they were telling the truth. He promised to pay them some $4,000 but only if they told the truth. He wanted verifiable facts. Although Bryant talked some, Milam did most of the talking. Milam, who was an Army officer, was the more articulate. Milam admitted that although they hadn’t intended to kill Till, he became enraged by Till’s taunting about how black men were better lovers than whites and bragging about all the white women he had had.[37] His wallet fell out of his pocket and they found three pictures of white girls in it. Till claimed one was his girlfriend, that he had sex with her and “she loves it.” He said that although they had pistol-whipped him, Till never seemed to be frightened of them. After he became enraged, Milam shot Till in the side of the head then they dumped his body in the Tallahatchie River. They had attached a heavy fan from a gin to his neck to submerge him.[38] After he had finished his story, he had Milam and both Bryants read it and initial it. It was the first that Carolyn had heard of what they had done to the boy.
When Huie’s story came out, many blacks became even more incensed then they already were and some blacks have been incensed ever since, at least in part because Mamie Till-Mosley and others, including Preacher Wright, went around the country talking about Bobo and his murder, and talking about how bad Mississippi was. One northern black woman who Huie knew told him that his Look article would affect their efforts to promote his death as a case for civil rights. Black activists and white activist/historians claim that Huie lied because he didn’t mention others who might have been involved but Huie’s intent was to tell Bryant and Milam’s story, not speculate about who did what and who didn’t. He went to Mississippi to get their story, not to investigate the crime. Witnesses had testified in Bryant and Milam’s trial that others were involved. Many were up in arms because they didn’t believe Carolyn Bryant’s account – and black activists today are STILL up in arms. Like the Jews who refuse to accept that Leo Frank might have been involved in the death of 13-year-old Mary Phagan[39], many blacks and white civil rights activists refuse to accept that Emmett Till may have actually propositioned Carolyn Bryant. And that is exactly what Emmett “Bobo” Till’s actions were, if Carolyn Bryant was truthful. Tim Tyson claims she recanted when he was interviewing here in 2008 but after his book about Till was published, Mrs. Donham and her daughter-in-law, who was present and who had typed up her manuscript, said she didn’t.[40] FBI investigators determined that Tyson had no proof of her recantation. He taped the interview but her recantation is not on it. He claims she said it while he was setting up his tape. He points to a single-sentence note he claims he wrote down at the time as proof. She definitely didn’t recant in her manuscript. Based on what Mrs. Donham said in her testimony and what she said in her manuscript, Emmett Till not only made an unwanted sexual advance, he put his hands on her, which constitutes assault.
Bobo Till was definitely capable of violence, as his mother’s account of his attack on his former stepfather demonstrates. Although she and others praised him as a well-mannered boy, that incident puts the lie to their assertions. Her claims are based on her perceptions of him and the reality is that parents have no clue what their kids are like when they’re away from them after somewhere around age nine. Probably every murderer’s mother since Caine has claimed “my boy is a good boy.” She and other’s also claimed he wouldn’t have bragged about sexual conquests because “he was only fourteen.” Well, some fourteen-year-olds have sex. Do they tell their mothers? Actually, when Huie asked Mamie if Bobo was having sex, she replied that she didn’t know, that he was at the age when boys become interested in sex and that if he was, he wouldn’t tell her.[41]
Some of the blacks present that night later claimed that Till didn’t do anything but take her hand, if that. One of the girls said all he did was put the money in her hand instead of on the counter.[42] Simeon Wright claimed a half century later that there was no photograph, no one dared Till to accost Bryant and that he was the one who went in the store and he didn’t drag Till out by the arm. However, these claims were made more than fifty years after the fact after tons of publicity about the case by civil rights activists and possibly pressure from family members. Just how the family and civil rights activists have presented the story is evidenced by the sign they placed at the place where Milam and Bryant threw Till’s body in the river. The sign says it was thrown in the river “as a warning” to other blacks when they actually threw it in the river in an attempt to conceal it.[43]
There were assertions that the Klan and the White Citizens’ Council were involved. However, FBI investigators determined that none of those accused in the kidnapping and murder were Klan members or had any association with it.
The reality is that blacks and white civil rights activists have been looking for someone to prosecute for Emmett Till’s death ever since Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were acquitted. They first focused on other members of the Milam/Bryant family. Now that they’re dead, they’re focused on Carolyn Bryant Donham. They’re pressing the state of Mississippi to bring charges against her. They don’t have long to force such an action and even if they are successful, it’s doubtful she’ll live long enough to stand trial because she is an 88-year-old woman and is currently under hospice care while dying of cancer.[44] Relatives of Till formed a legacy foundation in 2005 with the goal of finding somebody to prosecute for his death.[45] The foundation is a continuation of an organization Mamie Till-Mosby formed after the NAACP withdrew their support of her speaking engagements. They managed to get the FBI to conduct an investigation which led nowhere, a grand jury that included black members refused to issue any indictments. Incidentally, although the FBI agent in charge of the investigation has commented that Donham’s manuscript and the warrant is “evidence,” the FBI has actually had the manuscript for years.[46] Every single document the foundation and other “researchers” have been able to scrounge up had been turned over to the FBI.
The Till foundation members are going after Bryant-Donham on the basis of a single comment made by Moses Wright in his testimony. He testified that he heard a voice that was “lighter” than a man’s. Trying to prosecute on the basis of this statement would be beyond impossible. Moses Wright has been dead for decades, as has everyone else known to be there that night. The Wright children were in the house and didn’t hear what was said. They have no witnesses and Wright did not identify the voice as that of a woman, much less Carolyn Bryant. Although Simeon Wright later claimed that his father said the voice was a woman, he is dead as well as his father and there is no way to corroborate what would be hearsay evidence. Mrs. Donham did not admit to being at the house when Till was taken – she said they brought him to her at the store.[47] In her testimony, she said she did not see Till again after the incident in the store so there is a conflict, but the statute of limitations on perjury is long-since past. She can also claim she did not look at him. In short, there is no case against the woman.
Incidentally, an autopsy of Till’s remains released in 2015 revealed that he was killed by 7 ½ birdshot. This is a good indication that Milam DID NOT intend to kill him. Cartridges containing birdshot are normally used to kill rats and other small rodents from a few feet away. Cartridges designed to kill humans use solid or hollow-point bullets, not birdshot. Why Milam had his pistol loaded with birdshot will never be known. Perhaps he intended to shoot Till to scare him. He told Huie that he decided to kill him because he kept going on and on about sex with white women.[48] The shot killed him because it was fired from very close range, close enough the shot entered his brain.
Then there is the matter of Emmett Till’s father. This is what Huie later told an interviewer about how the story came out:
William Bradford Huie: I was in—I wasn’t in Alabama when the trial was held. I came back—I was in California working on a film, I came back to my home here in Hartsill, oh, three or four months after the trial. And uh, I picked up Look magazine one night, and I looked at the letters written in, and somebody had taken this fact: it had been discovered by then. And that—-young Till’s father had been killed during the Second World War and was a soldier. And so some uh, white boy out of Harvard-—a black man would never have done this—-some white boy out of Harvard had written a poem about the irony of young Emmett Till being killed in Mississippi while his father gave his life for the proposition “All men are created equal,” etc. etc. Well, I looked at it, and I said, nonsense. It doesn’t happen that way. I was in the Second World War, and most black men were stevedores. They were not where they would give their lives for the proposition that all men are created equal. So I had one of the strangest experiences in my life, one of the great coincidences in my life. When I had done the story of He Slew the Dreamer, three …
William Bradford Huie: When I did-—when I wrote the, when I was doing the research for The Execution of Private Slovik, I was in the Pentagon. Ninety-six Americans were executed during the Second World War, 95 of them for murder and uh, rape, and Slovik who was executed for desertion.[49] And all 96 of those men are buried in a secret plot, uh, near, um, or adjoining an American cemetery in Northern France. And I had to-—the Army when they finally cooperated with me on the Slovik story I wanted to photograph Slovik’s grave. And so I had to get, uh, permission. I had to get from them to tell me the row number and the number of Slovik’s grave in this plot of 96. And the Colonel had had it for me, and they took it out of the vault, because they never expect—-it was top secret everything. On his desk he had a key, as to the numbers of the graves. There are no names on any of these graves, just numbers. But there’s, on this key, there’s a, there’s a name and an address, who that man was. And the Colonel had to go away somewhere, and I should have been court-martialed for this, because the moment I saw it, I knew that there was a story on, in each of those numbers. So I whirled it around here, and I’m copying it down just as fast as I can. He goes away twice and I get most of the names down and I have that now. I really shouldn’t say this on the air, because the Army may court-martial me for this now. But at any rate, I’m the only man outside of somewhere in the depths of the Pentagon that’s got that key. And after I read this piece in Looke, I whirled around, picked up that key, and I looked just three graves from Eddie Slovik, and I saw, Private Louis Till. And this only means that the man has been executed for rape and/or murder. And I said, “Oh no, this can’t be the same man.” The next morning I got up and I called the Judge Advocate General of the United States Army, whom I knew. Now this man came from Georgia, he had typical Georgian racial attitudes.
William Bradford Huie: And uh, so, I called him and I said now this is the story in Mississippi, um, the boy who was killed over there, I said, “I have just found this and I want you to check it for me and tell me who it is.” Uh, he was interested. About two hours later he called me and he was just overjoyed. And he says, “Goddamn Huie, that’s the same damn nigger.” I said, “That’s that boy nigger’s father.” He said, “I’ve got the case in front of me,” he says, “The most fool case of killing two Italian women during a, air raid we ever had. We hanged him in Langert.” And uh, so uh, he said, I said, “Well, send me the case.” And then I said, “Now listen General, let’s just wait a minute.” I said, “Now this boy in Mississippi never knew his father.” I said, “This hasn’t got anything to do with this case over there, and it doesn’t excuse anybody from murder or anything of this sort.” Uh, so I don’t think any of this should be, I said, “I don’t know whether I’m going to write the story or not,” because I said, “I don’t think this ought to be revealed.” So [cough] we sit down down on it. Well, at any rate, later the story crept out, because he gives it out. It’s too good. He has to tell Senator Eastland and so forth and they call a press conference and so forth.
Huie related that some black friends of his, including at least one NAACP official, were incensed when the news came out. They had been using Bobo’s death and his killers acquittal in their campaign for civil rights in Mississippi. That his father had been executed for rape and murder of white women might be construed as an indication that Emmett was a potential rapist. NAACP executive Roy Wilkins told Huie he “almost feel into the Louis Till trap.” He planned to refer to the contrast between Louis’ and Emmett’s death in a speech but at the last minute decided not to use it.
Some black activists have attempted to whitewash Louis Till’s conviction for rape and murder. Black author and civil rights activist John Edgar Wideman took up the cause of Louis Till and all but claimed he was “lynched” by white officers just like his son Emmett was “lynched” by whites in Mississippi.[50] Louis Till and Fred A McMurray, were convicted of rape of two Italian women and murder of another on the basis of testimony of another black soldier who was with them and a British soldier when they broke in on the women during an air raid on an Italian port near Rome. The records of the court martial were classified, as are all court martials, until Till’s were declassified in the wake of Bobo’s death.[51] Wideman obtained a copy of Till’s court-martial then wrote an article for Esquire and a book in which he speculated that Till might have been innocent but was convicted by racist white officers. He claimed the black soldier who testified against him did so to save his own ass. He took Till’s silence as a sign that he was reconciled that he had no hope. In short, Wideman seems to have sought to exonerate Till because he was Emmett’s father. Although some claim there is a genetic connection that may lead some to become criminals, the claim is disputed by psychologists who claim that culture, not hereditary is a determining factor in a person’s actions. Psychologists refuse to accept any finding that might indicate that there is any difference between the races, particularly anything that might suggest an inferiority of members of the Negro race.[52]
Milam claimed to Milam that Till said his grandmother was white. If so, he would have to have been referring to Louis Till’s mother because he only knew one grandmother and she was Moses Wright’s wife’s sister. If true, that might indicate why Louis Till was orphaned. However, photographs of Louis Till do not show the face of a mulatto. If he did have white ancestry – and many blacks do – it was probably further back in his ancestral line. Existing photos of Emmett Till, all black and white, indicate that his complexion was lighter than most blacks, more brown than black, which is an indication of white ancestry. In fact, when Emmett was born, he had light skin, blonde hair and blue eyes. His mother’s friends and neighbors thought she had been sleeping around – the milkman was a favorite bet, so was the iceman. They were both white. She claims she was a virgin when she got married and that Louis was the only man she’d slept with. Photos of Mamie show her as having a lighter complexion. Huie described her complexion as café a lait. Perhaps the white ancestor was on her father’s side of the family. His ancestry is irrelevant to what happened except that Milam may have told the truth about Till’s actions and claims.
Soon after the trial, Preacher Wright moved to Chicago. His wife Elizabeth had already gone; she left immediately after Emmett was taken. She is reported to have not spent another night in their house. Some, if not all, of his cousins also moved to Chicago. Mamie Bradley, her name at the time, went on a speaking tour talking about Emmett’s death. The NAACP saw her as a cash cow but she said if anyone was going to make money off of Emmett’s death, it should be her. An angry Roy Wilkins said she was capitalizing her son’s death. The organization stopped funding her and started funding Preacher Wright instead. She formed her own organization to attract donations and continued speaking. Emmett became a poster child for the civil rights movement, which was eager to point to his murder as an example of injustice in Mississippi in particular, and elsewhere in the United States, particularly the South. Before the NAACP broke ties with her, his mother is reported to have gone on the most successful fund-raising tour in the organization’s history. Alabama civil rights activist Rosa Parks was arrested the following December for refusing to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery. She claimed Emmett Till’s death had inspired her.[53]
The death of Emmett Till was made for the civil rights movement. According to their claim, he was an innocent young boy who was murdered for “whistling at a white woman.” His family – actually Mamie’s family since his father had no family – were demoralized by Bill Huie’s story and Carolyn Bryant’s testimony. Mamie and others who knew Emmitt later claimed he couldn’t have done the things she had accused him of. They justified their beliefs with the “he was just fourteen” statement. None of them had been in the store and they had no idea what had happened, but they begin to think they did. One of the two girls who was in the group with Bobo claimed she watched him through the window and all he did was put the money in her hand instead of on the counter. (There was evidently a practice in local stores that whenever a black man bought something from a white woman, they put the money on the counter rather than putting it in her hand and touching her.) One of the men claimed Bobo was only in the store for less than a minute. Obviously, no one timed the incident so they really had no idea how long he was in the store. Moreover, no one heard the conversation. They only knew that she had come running out of the store and Bobo had wolf whistled at her, and that she went to the car and got a pistol.
Around the time of the fiftieth anniversary of Emmett Till’s death, a number of people started “researching” the event – working on books, film projects and the like. By this time most of those who played a role in the incident had died. Those who were still alive were approaching old age, or were already elderly. Moses Wright passed away in 1977. His wife Elizabeth had died seven years previously. Mamie Till-Mobley had written a book about her son’s death – she died of heart failure the same year it was published in 2003. Researchers started claiming there were inconsistencies in what Carolyn Bryant told her husband’s lawyer and what she said in court. They started looking for someone to prosecute. A black doctor named Howard had gone around drumming up witnesses to testify against Bryant and Milam. He found one witness named Willy Reed who claimed he had heard the sound of beatings coming from Leslie Milam’s barn, and that he had seen J.W. Milam come out of the barn and get a drink out of a well. Leslie Milam managed a farm in an adjoining county. If Reed’s accusations were true, the trial would have had to have been held in Sunflower County rather than Tallahatchie County and the judge would have had to declare a mistrial.[54] He also claimed to have seen three white men in Milam’s truck with three blacks in the back, one of which he claimed was Emmett Till. Two black men who worked for J.W. Milan were claimed to have been with him and Bryant when they abducted Till and subsequently killed him. A story circulated that they were being held under assumed names in a jail in another town so they couldn’t testify. Both men denied that they played any part in the murder. Reed left Mississippi for Chicago after the trial and had a nervous breakdown shortly after he got there. Bryant and Milam had both been dead for some time, as had Leslie Milam. Carolyn Bryant Donham, however, was still alive. They began focusing on her as someone guilty of – something!
Simeon Wright, Preacher Wright’s youngest son who had been 12 at the time, wrote a book in which he contested Carolyn Bryant’s version of events. He claimed he was the one who went in and got Bobo and that he didn’t drag him out as she claimed. He claimed Bobo was in the store “less than a minute.” He also said that there was no picture, that Bobo never made any claim about having had sex with white women, that there was no dare. Whether his version is true or not will never be known since he is now deceased. It is possible that Simeon carried a lot of guilt. He also claimed that his father had told him that the voice he heard outside after they took Bobo out was a woman. Members of the family gave interviews on camera about the event – fifty years after it happened. Curtis Jones, the cousin who came down from Chicago after Bobo claimed he was present at the store but later recanted on his version of events when he realized -or was coerced into believing – he didn’t get there until Saturday after the event on Wednesday evening. Fifty years is a long, long time and although we like to think we have perfect memories of events, the reality is that we can’t even remember what happened five minutes ago! This is especially true as we get older. Our perception of events are colored by what we’ve heard from others, read, dreamed or imagined. People involved in the same event may remember it differently – and probably will. In Vietnam I was on an airplane that blew two main gear tires when the pilots were backing out of our parking spot. The copilot remembered that the tires had blown right after we pulled off of the runway after landing. I had another memory of something happening to me. I believed for years it happened but then it came to me that it had happened to a buddy and what I was remembering was the mental picture I had as he described it to me. Memory cannot be trusted.
Sometime around 2004 members of Mamie Till-Mosely’s family journeyed to Mississippi to meet with FBI agents in an attempt to have them open a case against Carolyn Bryant. Mississippi is a conservative state but its justice system, like the justice systems in nearly every state and the Federal Department of Justice, had been taken over by political progressives devoted to the concept of social justice. Prosecutors who weren’t even born in the 1950s and 60s were reopening old cases related to the civil rights movement, particularly the murder of Medgar Evers, a NAACP official who was shot at his home in Jackson in 1963. Evers was allegedly “investigating” the death of Emmett Till. Byron De La Beckwith, a fertilizer salesman and Marine Corps veteran who had fought on Guadalcanal and was wounded on Tarawa, was charged with the crime. Beckwith was tried twice; both trials ended with a hung jury. Evers’ widow pursued the case. Reporters from the Jackson Clarion-Ledger investigated Beckwith’s previous trial and found that jurors had been investigated illegally by a state agency. The state used that as grounds for a new trial. Beckwith protested that it was double jeopardy but a court ruled that it wasn’t. Prosecutors were able to coerce a former Klan member to testify that Beckwith had boasted of killing Evers at Klan meetings and he was convicted. Others who had been involved in notorious murders in the 50s and 60s were also convicted. The success in those cases convinced the Till family and various civil rights activists that they would be able to convict Carolyn Bryant. The trouble was, they had no evidence, just opinion.
Emmett Till’s relatives were convinced that “evidence” uncovered by a film maker and certain authors was enough to get Carolyn Bryant, who had divorced Roy Bryant in 1975 and remarried, indicted for murder, kidnapping or something. They asserted that she had lied in her court testimony because she added things that weren’t mentioned in her “statement” to Roy’s attorney. They managed to convince the FBI to investigate and the “evidence” was presented to a grand jury. However, their “evidence” was likely to lead to a no bill and that is exactly what happened. Then in 2017 Timothy Tyson’s book The Blood of Emmett Till came out. Tyson claimed in the book that Carolyn Bryant Donham had “recanted” her testimony. The Till relatives thought again that they had her. Tyson obtained Mrs. Donham’s unpublished memoir and turned a copy over to the FBI after submitting the original to the UNC archives. However, the FBI determined that Tyson lacked proof of a recantation and Mrs. Donham and her daughter-in-law, who was present when Tyson interviewed her, denied that she had recanted. Once again, Till’s relatives were disappointed.
The latest “new development” was the discovery of an unserved warrant for Carolyn Bryant’s arrest for kidnapping followed by Tyson’s “release” of Mrs. Donham’s manuscript to the media. Black activists went into a North Carolina nursing home where they thought Mrs. Donham was to harass her, but she wasn’t there. The family, represented by the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, a 501c (3) charitable organization run by family members, is pressing Mississippi to reopen the case in hopes of having Mrs. Donham indicted for kidnapping. All I can say is “good luck”! There are no longer any witnesses to testify against her and even though the memoir is revealing in that she says she lied to her husband that Till was not the one who had accosted her in the store, her description of the incident is the same that she gave to the court with the exception that she said she screamed for help in the memoir. She did not mention that she screamed in her testimony.
Did Emmett Till assault Carolyn Bryant and did he say the things she testified that he did? While there’s no way to be certain, it’s extremely likely that he did. The later claims by members of the Wright family that he didn’t are suspect. The passing off of his alleged remarks with the comment “he was only fourteen” is not only meaningless, but smacks of disinformation.
Was Carolyn Bryant present at Preacher Wright’s house when Emmett Till was taken? I don’t know, but I doubt it. If she was, she didn’t admit to it in the memoir. Wright does not claim that she was. He told the court that he heard someone in the yard with “a lighter voice” but he also told the court he couldn’t tell whether Bryant and Milam were in a car or a truck. (They were in Milam’s green and white 1955 ½ ton Chevrolet pickup.) Simeon Wright claimed his father told him the voice was a woman but he and his father are both dead. The witness who testified that he saw Emmett Till in the back of J.W. Milam’s pickup did not mention a woman – he said he saw three white men in the cab and two black men in the back with Till. William Bradford Huie said that Mrs. Bryant didn’t know what they had done to Till until she heard it in the law office where he met with Bryant and Milam.
Chances are, Carolyn Holloway Bryant Donham will be dead soon. Hopefully, her death will not make the news and the Till Legacy Foundation won’t find out about it. If they do, they or their supporters will do something. They’re too filled with hatred not to.
Note – The Leflour County grand jury just announced that they are not going to indict Carolyn Bryant Donham based on the ancient warrant. Wheeler Parker, who is not a blood relative of Emmett Till, made a statement to the press in which he lamented that the state of Mississippi failed to convict Till’s killer. Parker went to Mississippi with Till on the train and was present at Bryant’s store when the incident happened.
[1] Mrs. Donham and her daughter-in-law claim Tyson was going to help them get the memoir published but Tyson denies it.
[2] The FBI press release mentions the consideration of charging Mrs. Donham with the dubious charge – the FBI uses it when there’s no indication of a crime – of “Lying to the FBI.” However, there is no mention of charging Tyson with the same crime even though he was unable to substantiate his claim that she had “recanted.”
[3] Ironically, the incident that prompted Well’s editorial hadn’t happened in the South, but in northern Ohio in a suburb of Cleveland. A black man was convicted of rape although he claimed the sex he had with a white woman was consensual. Allegedly, he had been having sex with a married white woman and when they were caught, she hollered “rape.”
[4] His mother was born in Mississippi but never lived there after age two. Her family left Mississippi in the 1920s and moved to Illinois and settled in the Chicago area. Some of her relatives remained in Mississippi.
[5] “Smarting off” was and is common among blacks, particularly in northern ghettos like South Side Chicago and parts of Detroit. Black comedians make it part of their act.
[8] Some “histories” of Mississippi claim the bottomlands were unsettled, but former slaves and other blacks moved into the region after the Civil War and established farms, which were later wrested from them. However, it is a historical fact that whites moved into the region along the Yalobusha River immediately after the land was purchased from the Choctaw. Some came down from West Tennessee, which had just been settled a few years before.
[9] Farmers were allotted the amount of cotton they could grow by the Federal government as part of a program instituted during the Roosevelt Administration called the Farm Service Agency. Allotments were determined by the amount of acreage owned by the farmer. I don’t know what our allotment was but it was somewhere around ten acres. Landowners could rent their allotment out to other farmers to grow cotton on their land. Payment was often a share of the revenue from the sale of the cotton.
[10] Some would have probably referred to the house we lived in as a shack. It was an unpainted clapboard house that had been built in the 1840s-1850s. We had no running water; we got our water from a well outside until my dad had a well put in several years after we moved there.
[11] The induction center served West Tennessee, Eastern Arkansas and North Mississippi.
[12] “White trash” is a term coined by slaves to describe the poor whites who lived near plantations and sometimes did menial tasks such as cutting and hauling wood.
[13] Why an intelligent black woman who had been educated in white schools would move with her son into an all-black neighborhood and send him to an all-black school is inexplicable.
[14] “Parents” is used in the Wikipedia article about her but her father was living almost 250 miles away.
[15] His grandmother’s husband had died and she had remarried. Although her new husband liked children, he didn’t want them in the house.
[16] She was probably working on procurement of items for classified projects.
[17] Some accounts claim he’d been there three times, the second time as a toddler.
[18] I have some problems with Mrs. Mosley’s account. My family raised cotton and I picked cotton each fall. We couldn’t start picking until the dew was off – wet cotton causes problems at the gin – and didn’t get to the field until mid-morning. She also claimed they were paid $2.00 per hundred-weight. I don’t know about Mississippi, but where I came from, cotton pickers were paid a nickel a pound, which amounts to $5.00 a hundred.
[19] In those days composite pictures were made of elementary school classes but they were not wallet-size. If Emmett Till had one, he wasn’t carrying it around in his wallet unless he’d folded it.
[20] I have a copy of Huie’s book Wolf Whistle and Other Stories – I did not pay $400 for it! The book is becoming rare.
[21] His mother indicated that he went to Argo nearly every weekend.
[22] Actually, his mother told Huie when he asked her if Bobo had been having sex that he was of the age when boys discover sex and if he had, he certainly wasn’t going to tell her. Mamie Till-Mobley would make no mention of having talked to Huie in her memoir. She only mentions that she mounted a – unsuccessful – lawsuit against Huie and Look for “defaming” Emmett Till.
[23] In Huie’s account, he gives her height at five feet even.
[24] This places their marriage at the end of the 1951 school year, when she was seventeen. Accounts claim she “dropped out” of high school. Schools in the South got out in May then went back in July for the next year, then got out again in September for six weeks for “cotton-picking.”
[25] The so-called “N-word” was not considered a slur in the South in the 1950s. It was in common use by blacks as well as whites.
[26] Woke journalist Jerry Mitchell, who has written numerous articles claiming Carolyn lied, W.B Huie lied and so forth, claims that he asked Agent Killinger, the agent who investigated claims against her, says the person referred to was Juanita Milam.
[27] Roy and Carolyn Bryant remained married for twenty years after the Till incident. They divorced in 1975. Till’s mother claimed in her memoir that J.W. Milam and Juanita Milam were also divorced but there is no record of a divorce and her obituary mentioned him as her husband.
[28] His mother, who wasn’t there, later claimed it might not have been a wolf whistle at all but just a whistle. She said he sometimes whistled, she had taught him to whistle when he was having trouble with a word. Some of his relatives later claimed he was whistling at a checker move (which makes no sense at all since they said Carolyn Bryant had got her gun out of Juanita Milam’s car.)
[29][29][29] Simeon Wright was twelve years old at the time of the incident. He made his claim a half-century later when he wrote a book about himself. He accompanied some of his relatives to Mississippi and talked to an FBI agent. Whether he actually went in the store or his memory is faulty will never be known.
[30] Although there were later questions about who identified Till, it was obviously his uncle.
[31] Simeon Wright later claimed that his father told him the voice was a woman.
[32] In Huie’s account, Preacher Wright and his wife went to her brother’s home. Her brother, Crosby Smith, went to the sheriff’s office in Greenwood.
[33] It’s claimed that the sheriff didn’t want to arrest her because she was a mother.
[34] There are a lot of things in her memoir that don’t ring true. Roy was at home in his bed in the back of the store sleeping when the sheriff came by. Whether his wife was there or not is unclear. She may have been running the store. She claimed that Bobo’s remains only had two remaining teeth but a 2005 autopsy seems to indicate that only one tooth was missing. I say “seems” because much has been redacted in the report.
[35] Some accounts claim Bobo’s mother identified the body; it was actually Moses Wright. After identification, the body was embalmed and shipped to Chicago where Mamie Till-Mobley, as she later identified herself, insisted on an open-casket funeral even though Mississippi officials had directed that it remained closed.
[36] In reality, the state of Mississippi had charged Bryant and Milam with murder after they were indicted by a grand jury. They were tried but acquitted.
[37] Till apparently took his wallet with him when they took him and they found the picture of the white girl.
[38] The fan turned out not to be heavy enough for the swift current and the body drifted several miles downstream and hung up in a drift.
[39] I personally believe that Mary Phagan’s death was accidental but it occurred because she fell while Frank was having sex with her, probably from behind, and she hit her head on a lathe.
[40] Mrs. Donham’s daughter-in-law claims that Tyson had promised to help them get her manuscript published but he claims he made no such promises. He did submit the manuscript to the University of North Carolina archives. He made a copy and gave it to the FBI to review.
[41] Mrs. Mosley does not admit to talking to Huie in her memoir. However, he described her home as it was in his article “Wolf Whistle,” on the second story of a two-story building. She was there with her boyfriend Gene Mosley and a police officer who had been detailed as her bodyguard.
[42] Although I have not been in the store where the incident took place, there were several similar stores around where I grew up. My uncle operated one for a while. Although they had electric lighting, they were dimly lit. I find it doubtful that outside observers could have seen far into the store.
[43] They failed to weight it down properly. The fan was attached to his neck and his body floated free. Had they weighted down his feet, it probably wouldn’t have been found. The current was strong enough to move the body and the fan. Still, if it hadn’t hit a snag, it might have floated all the way down the river to the Yazoo then into the Mississippi and all the way to New Orleans. It might have never been found.
[44] After word of the discovery of the ages-old warrant against Carolyn Bryant and Tyson’s release of her manuscript, black activists in North Carolina stormed a nursing home where they thought she was. This shows how callous they are. As it turns out, she is not in North Carolina.
[45] There doesn’t seem to be any public record of the finances of this organization. I found one site that shows them with just under $1 million but whether this is how much revenue they have or how much they have collected is unclear.
[46] The ancient warrant the foundation uncovered is evidence, but it’s a state of Mississippi warrant, not a Federal warrant, and the FBI has no jurisdiction over it. Furthermore, a grand jury met in Greenwood after Bryant and Milam were acquitted to consider indictments for kidnapping but their proceedings resulted in a “no bill.” In short, the warrant is for a crime for which the actual kidnappers were never charged. Good luck proving something with that warrant!
[47] In the Look article, Huie related that Milam and Bryant said they did not take Till to Bryant. Milam told Wright they were there to get the “boy who did the talking” in Money and Wright took them to him.
[48] It is possible that Till really didn’t have good sense, as Preacher Wright told Milam when he and Bryant came to his house to get him. He said the boy “didn’t know what he was doing.” Till may have not had the sense to shut up, but kept going on and on and making Milam madder and madder. Milam was not the kind of man to make mad.
[49] Huie is referring to the 96 men who were executed in the European Theater. There were others in Asia and Australia.
[50] Technically, Emmett Till wasn’t “lynched,” he was murdered. The word “lynch,” which dates back to the Revolutionary War, was coined in reference to what was known as “Lynch’s law” in Central Virginia where a judge ordered the hanging of Tories who had collaborated with the British. The true definition of “lynch” is “to put to death (as by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission.”
[51] It is true that some 80% of the American soldiers executed for crimes in Europe were black. What this means is unclear. Does it mean white officers were more likely to convict black soldiers of capital crimes or does it mean that blacks were more likely to engage in such offenses. With the exception of Slovik, all of the men executed in Europe were convicted of rape and/or murder.
[52] “Negro” is the correct term, “African” is not because there are other races on the African continent than Negro.
[53]Rosa Parks was an activist. She was secretary of the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP and had attended a seminar at the notorious Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee a few weeks before her famous protest. Although she claimed to have not been a member, she had been involved with Communist Party in Alabama, as had her husband. Four other black women had been arrested before she was. They filed the suit against the Montgomery bus company that led to the changing of the company policy.
[54] Certain black activists believed the Tallahatchie County jury was going to acquit the two men. If they did, they couldn’t be tried again. However, if the judge declared a mistrial because of Reed’s testimony, Sunflower County might be able to arrest and indict them and try them again. Reed, who was only eighteen at the time, was promised that he’d be moved to Chicago if he testified.
Three Texas lawyer-politicians recently released a report they sent to the Texas legislature of their determination after their prompt “investigation” of the massacre of children and teachers in Robb Elementary School on May 24th of this year. As a result of that report, the Uvalde school board decided to take action against the chief of the school police, Chief Pete Arredondo, because of the politicians’ accusations of improper actions against the chief and other law enforcement officers who, in the opinion of the three politicians, were negligent because of the 77-minute delay from the time the shooter, Salvador Ramos, entered the school and his death at the hands of a US Border Patrol tactical team. However, by taking action against the chief, the school board members are overlooking their own failures as reported in the same report.
In response to the 1999 shooting at the Columbine, Colorado high school, Texas schools, like schools all over the country, were fitted with self-locking doors that can only be unlocked with a key or key card, not only on outside entrances but on classrooms as well. All of the doors at Robb Elementary had been fitted with the “Columbine” doors, doors which lock automatically when they are pulled shut. The doors also are solid steel with narrow windows in the middle mounted in a steel doorframe. They open outwardly, rather than inwardly, which makes them more difficult to batter in or open with a prybar or sledgehammer. Although some schools are fitted with locks that can be opened with a key card, the Robb doors seem to require a key. Each teacher was issued a key to his or her room that can only be used for that particular door. The principal, custodian and other school staff were issued master keys that can open any look. Some school police officers were evidently also issued master keys. Teachers and other staff at Robb were under supposedly “strict” orders to keep all doors locked at all times. Responsibility for ensuring that those orders were carried out rests on school officials, including school police, the principal and assistant principal AND the superintendent of schools as well as the school board.
However, a lackadaisical attitude seems to have developed at the school (and possibly other Uvalde schools) in regard to security. Rather than ensuring that doors were locked, teachers were known to prop the outside doors open with rocks to allow students to return to the school. (Although there was a video of a teacher propping a door open with a rock, she was found to have pulled the door shut when she saw the shooter. However, the door had been unlocked and could not lock when she closed it.) Some allegedly kept their classroom doors unlocked because they didn’t want to carry a key. There was also a problem in that substitute teachers were not issued keys and were unable to gain access to their classrooms. They had to have a custodian or someone come and unlock the doors. A method of getting around the locks using magnets had somehow been developed at the school and substitutes were instructed to use the magnets.
Robb Elementary is a multi-building facility rather than a single large structure as most schools are. There are no less than FOURTEEN separate structures on the facility, all connected by walkways. The shootings were in the West building, the western-most of the facilities buildings. Although the school was built in 1955, the West building was more recent; it was built in the 1980s. The outside of the building is brick while the interior rooms seem to be of wooden frames with drywall. The building has three entrances, one on the west, another on the east (or northeast) and the third on the south end of the building at the end of the corridor where most of the classrooms are. Rooms were entered through a door in a vestibule off of the corridor. Adjoining classrooms have a door between them.
For some reason, all three doors in the West building were unlocked on May 24. Whether leaving the doors unlocked is common practice or they were left unlocked on this particular day is not revealed in the report. It was the last day of school and there were visitors on the campus, parents and family who were there for awards presentations and other formalities. District policy was for those doors to be kept locked and both the custodian and school police were required to ensure that they were. School police conducted routine walkthroughs of the district schools, checking doors to make sure they were looked. However, teachers had a practice of warning each other when officers were in the school so they could make sure their doors were locked or lock them if they weren’t.
The report states that there was a negligent attitude in the district regarding maintenance of the door locks. The locks used at Uvalde had been discontinued by the manufacturer but the real problem is that either teachers and staff weren’t reporting malfunctions or they were being ignored – or both. The door to room 111, one of the two rooms Ramos, the shooter, was in was known to require “extra effort” to ensure that it was locked. There is some question as to whether this issue had been reported to maintenance. The report does not state that the door would not lock, only that it required “extra effort” without stating what that effort was. I assume the “extra effort” was either pulling or pushing the door to make sure the lock engaged. Without evidence to indicate which of the two doors Ramos entered, the report assumes that he entered room 111 under the assumption that it was not locked. There have been media claims that the door was not locked although this is an assumption, not a fact.
Ramos entered the school through the unlocked west door of the West building. It is the closest door to where he entered school grounds after driving his grandmother’s truck into a ditch. He was shooting at the school in the some-five minutes from the time he crashed the truck until he gained entry through the unlocked door. His entry and stroll down the corridor to the vestibule of rooms 111 and 112 were captured by a school security camera. (One media article claimed the camera caught him “roaming the halls” of the school.) Although one little girl in another classroom claimed he tried the door to her room and fired a shot into the room, the video does not show this. The video shows him slowing momentarily possibly by a vestibule on the right (north) side of the corridor but he continues on to the vestibule for 111 and 112 without further pause. He’s too far from the camera and inside the vestibule so there’s no way to tell what he did from the video although he starts firing into one of the classrooms then walks in. After that, there are a couple of minutes in which he fires repeatedly.
By the time the first officers come in the building three minutes after Ramos entered, the firing has stopped and the screaming of children referenced in the video has ceased. The officers reported that the hallway was filled with smoke and debris from drywall in the air. Unfortunately, the editors placed lettering right over the most important point on the video and it’s difficult to see what happened by the vestibule of the two rooms. However, once the lettering is removed, the corridor in the vicinity of the vestibule appears murky. The released video is misleading because it’s so far from the two rooms and only shows the officers who came in the east and west entrances. Chief Arredondo and other officers came in through the south entrance and were in the immediate vicinity of the two classrooms the entire time, at least Arredondo was. The video shows at least two figures in the vicinity of the classrooms with four others initially entering through the west entrance, the same entrance used by Ramos. None of the six officers first on the scene in the north end of the corridor are armed with anything but pistols. While they are all wearing vests, some of which were armored, none wore rifle rated vests capable of stopping a rifle bullet. None were wearing helmets or leg protection.
The officers advance down the corridor looking for the shooter. They peer into the glass in doors. After they reach the vestibule for rooms 111 and 112, Ramos somehow becomes aware of their presence and fires a burst of fire at the doorways. Two officers are hit by flying debris, none seriously. The officers retreat out of the line of fire. It is at this time that the officers become aware that Ramos is armed with a rifle. One says “that’s an AR” meaning an AR-15.
There is no fire from Ramos and officers said they heard no screaming and no voices to indicate there were children alive inside the two rooms. It’s not until a half hour later that one of the victims calls 911 on her cell phone. (She was apparently in room 112 while Ramos was in 111.) Whether this changes the situation is debatable. Although he said he did not consider himself the on-scene commander – there were other officers in the building from both the school police and the Uvalde police department who got there the same time he did or perhaps slightly before – Chief Arredondo took action. He sent a man outside to call for a SWAT team. Ironically, the Uvalde police SWAT commander was already in the building. He also requested a Halligan tool or some other means of breaching the door, although he didn’t consider it likely they would be able to break the door down considering their construction. Arredondo said he now considered that the shooter had been neutralized in that he was inside a locked classroom and was no longer a direct threat to those in other rooms. He said he believed the most important thing was to evacuate the school and he sent officers outside to initiate an evacuation using the school windows out of fear the shooter would hear children in the hallway and fire through the walls. There were children in room 109 and their teacher had been hit by a bullet that came through the wall. Not all classrooms were occupied. Ramos entered the school at 11:33. Some children were in the cafeteria and others had been on the playground.
The authors of the report somehow jumped to the conclusion that room 111 was not locked. They saw reports that the lock wasn’t working properly and assumed the door had not been locked when Ramos arrived and that he entered through that door. The teacher in the room, who was wounded but survived, said the door was locked. He also said Ramos came into his room from room 112. The “investigators,” if they should be called that since they are lawyer/politicians, concluded the door had been unlocked and that it remained unlocked. They never acknowledged the possibility, at least not in the report, that Ramos could have found the door unlocked but then pulled it shut as he entered, thus causing it to lock. (The door was unlocked by the BORTAC agent in charge of the team so it would have been unlocked when investigators looked at it.) Chief Arredondo was close enough to the door that he could see the cylinder protruding into the door frame. The Border Patrol tactical team commander, who physically unlocked the door with a key, said the door was locked. In short, the report authors and the “experts” who scrutinized some investigative reports are second-guessing.
The criticism of the officers is that they didn’t take action soon enough but chose to protect their own lives. Media reports often mention that there were 379 officers involved, without acknowledging that some of those officers came from as far as an hour away and didn’t get there until near the time when Ramos was finally shot. The BORTAC team that finally ended the incident came from Del Rio, a border town some 70 miles to the west. Map Quest shows a driving time of one hour and six minutes. Granted, the agents were no doubt driving at much higher speeds but by the time they learned of the situation and got there, at least an hour had elapsed. There were other Border Patrol agents at the school but they were from the local station. Some were parents of children in the school. One group of Federal marshals came from San Antonio, which is 84 miles and an hour and 25 minutes away. It wasn’t until the Federal marshals arrived that a rifle rated shield became available. Other shields had been brought in but were not rifle rated.
Critics and “experts” advocate that the officers should have breached the door and rushed right in but they didn’t always have the facts. ALLERT, a law enforcement academic department at Texas State University at San Marcos, put out an unfactual report claiming officers should have used equipment they did not have. [1]
Then there is another issue: There is evidence to indicate that the Uvalde school system failed Salvador Ramos. His school records indicate that he had a learning problem but no action was ever taken to help him. He wasn’t placed in a special education class nor was he offered any tutorial help. His situation was complicated even further because of the bullying he received, not only from fellow students but also allegedly from teachers. His family says that both he and his female cousin were bullied, perhaps because they were poor. Ramos’ grandmother was a Uvalde school system employee who retired with 27 years’ service according to the report. His mother, however, who worked as a waitress and was known in the community, had a reputation among some neighbors as a drug user. His parents had split up at some point while he was a child. He had an older sister who had finished school. He was found to have researched the learning comprehension problem dyslexia, a medical condition that causes the person to misunderstand words. Dyslexia can be overcome; there have been people in history who were dyslexic, General George S. Patton for one, famed physicist Albert Einstein for another. Ramos stuttered; stuttering can be dyslexia-related. Following are symptoms of dyslexia:
Salvador Ramos exhibited many, if not all of these symptoms.
In short, there were many failures at Uvalde and a lot of people should be held responsible, including the staff and teachers at the school and even the school superintendent as well as Chief Arredondo and others.
[1] I have read the ALLERT report and found it to be mostly theory and little fact. For example, they state that Ramos entered through room 111 then went back out and shot in 112 and went back in when there is no proof of such an action. The video does not show what took place in the vestibule for the two rooms. They also state that the rooms had to be locked from outside without recognizing that the complaint about the room 111 lock was not that it wouldn’t lock, but that it took additional effort to ensure that it engaged.
Now that the Texas legislature has released a report of their investigation into the events of May 24th at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, a somewhat clearer picture is starting to emerge. For one thing, we now know that the shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos (the legislature report refuses to name him – they refer to him as “the attacker”), had some kind of fixation on the idea of killing a bunch of children. Just what prompted his plan is unknown and may never be known, but there are indications that he held some kind of grudge against children at Robb, where he himself had been a student, possibly particularly fourth graders. He reportedly mentioned something to someone a few weeks before he went on his rampage about something that happened in fourth grade. His female cousin, who was his fourth-grade classmate, told investigators that he was bullied by other children. One girl tied his shoelaces together and he stood up and fell, suffering injuries in the fall. She said they were both bullied, including by teachers. (Ramos’ teacher was at the school at the time of the shooting but was in another room.) His family said he was teased because of a stutter. His former girlfriend said she believed he had been sexually abused as a child by one of his mother’s boyfriends and his mother ignored his cries.
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Whatever Ramos’ motivation was, he seems to have decided some time ago that he was going to be a school shooter, apparently whenever he could lay his hands on suitable weapons. He let his hair grow long and changed his style of dress; he began dressing in black and wearing combat boots. It was about this time that his girlfriend dumped him. (There are theories put forth that mass shooters are sex-starved loners but Ramos had girlfriends.) As for him personally, he was born in North Dakota but his parents returned to Uvalde where his mother and possibly both of his parents were from. He had an older sister. His mother was known around Uvalde, as was his grandmother. His mother worked as a waitress and had a reputation as a drug user. Their relationship was strained as was his relationship with his father. His grandmother worked for the Uvalde school district for twenty-seven years. (There were reports that she was a teacher’s aide at Robb at the time of the shooting but this seems to have been in error. The report says she was retired.)
Although he seems to have been a good student as a young child, he got off track somewhere, possibly around fourth grade, and became truant. He sometimes missed as many as 100 days in a school year. His grades were failing. The last grade he completed was ninth. He was expelled from school due to his constant truancy and failing grades. He got a job at a local Whataburger (a well-known Texas fast-food line) but was fired after a month when a female coworker complained about comments he made to her. He then got on with Wendy’s. He also worked for his grandfather in his air-conditioning business. His grandfather paid in cash. His family said he hoarded his money. They thought he planned to buy a car or get an apartment. He didn’t have a drivers license. His family said he didn’t know how to drive.
Like many other teenagers, Ramos spent time on Internet chat groups. He expressed a fondness for guns but his family says he’d never even shot one, much less owned one, other than a BB gun. He posted a video in which he was riding around town “dryfiring” at pedestrians with a BB gun. (There were earlier media reports that he was shooting people with BBs.) He posted another video of him with a dead cat in a clear plastic bag. He made hostile comments to girls in chat rooms. He had a reputation around Uvalde among other teenagers, some of whom had started referring to him as “school shooter.” A local student he knew advised him that he was being called by that name. He made several efforts to obtain a firearm. He tried to get his older sister to buy one for him but she refused. He had the money. He ended up spending some $5,000-6,000 on two AR-15 knockoff rifles along with accessories and ammunition. He told someone that he was waiting for a shipment; when it came in “something is going to happen”, something that he said would make him famous.
He bought two rifles soon after his eighteenth birthday, one from Daniel Defense, a firearms manufacturer in Savannah, Georgia that is famous for its high-quality rifles modeled on the 1950s-era AR-15. Daniel sells both to individuals and the government. He ordered the one rifle, which cost right at $2,000, from Daniel’s website but had it delivered to Oasis Outback, a local outfitter that features a barbecue restaurant as well as a sporting goods store. Federal law requires that mail-order (and Internet) gun sellers deliver their weapons to another licensed firearms dealer for the customer to pick up. He bought a second rifle from Oasis’ stock. The salesman told interviewers that he asked where he got the money for such expensive purchases and Ramos said, “I saved it.” The Oasis clerk said his conduct wasn’t unusual. However, customers who claimed to be there when he was in the store said he was “weird.” He purchased clips and other accessories from various sources and bought ammunition as well, some by mail order. His last order, a shipment of over a thousand rounds of .223 hollow-point cartridges arrived the night before he went on his spree.
Some believed that he planned to go to the elementary school the day graduating seniors went there to walk through the hallways. If so, he missed it, perhaps because his ammunition hadn’t arrived yet. The next day was the last day of school for elementary students. He was upset with his grandmother because she had told him she was going to remove him from her cellphone family plan. She had also banned his rifles from her house. His uncle agreed to keep at least one of them but he evidently spirited it away and had both rifles at his grandmother’s house. Whether shooting his grandmother was part of his plan is not certain, but he told a young German girl that he was “friends” with on the Internet that he was going to shoot her. After he shot her in the face, he got back on his phone and told the girl he had shot her. She replied “cool” but later deleted the post. However, it was on Ramos’ phone.
After shooting his grandmother, he jumped in her truck (even though he had no license) and drove toward the school a few blocks away. His grandmother’s neighbor called police. A video released by Texas media – without permission from investigators – shows the truck crashing into a concrete drainage ditch next to the school yard. The video, which came from the funeral home across the street, shows two men walk toward the truck, then turn around and start running away after he shot at them. His family believes these are the first shots he ever fired. They don’t think he had ever fired a firearm of any kind before. His uncle said he didn’t even know how to insert the clip into the rifle, he fumbled with it and dropped it on the floor. The video then shows him walking toward the school. He jumps over a five-foot fence (such fences are NOT common around Texas schools. There’s a school only a few thousand feet from my house and there is no fence around it) after throwing a bag of ammunition over it.
There were children outside playing and a coach dressed in black was outside with one group. Police had rushed toward the school after being alerted by the grandmother’s neighbor. One officer saw the coach and thought he was the shooter. Fortunately, he didn’t fire. Teachers alerted the school that there was someone on campus shooting and an announcement was made for students and teachers to get in their rooms and lock down. School personnel thought it was a “bail-out,” which is common in Uvalde. The town is only fifty miles from the border. Vehicles carrying illegal immigrants are chased into town by law enforcement. They hit something or are stopped and the illegals “bail-out” and take off running. Some are armed.
Ramos walked to the western entrance to the west building – Robb Elementary has several buildings connected by walkways. Video from a school security camera shows him coming through the door. For some reason, he left his bag and one of his rifles outside. The report claims that all three doors to the building were unlocked, a violation of school policy that called for them to be locked at all times. The doors are equipped with automatic locking doors but they can be rendered ineffective with a key. Someone had unlocked the doors, perhaps to make it easier for children and teachers to go in and out during recess or maybe because it was the last day of school and there were a lot of visitors on campus. Ramos had recently talked to his cousin’s son, who was an elementary student, about their activities. The video shows him coming through the door then it switches to show him walking some 70-80 feet down the hallway to rooms 111 and 112 where he starts shooting and walks through the door of one of the classrooms. He only hesitates for a second before he disappears. One of the rooms is his former classroom. The report states that several school employees said that the lock to room 111 was faulty, that it had to be forcibly locked rather than locking automatically as soon as the door came shut. They DO NOT say that the door could not be locked. The school, as are most Texas schools, is equipped with self-locking doors that can only be opened by someone with a key or card reader. The report is unclear whether or not the Robb locks used card readers, they apparently had keys. Several school staff and students knew the door didn’t always lock; they often went there when it was unoccupied to use a printer. This led the investigators to conclude that the door to room 111 “may” not have been locked.
Just which classroom Ramos entered is unclear. There is a vestibule with the doorways to rooms 111 and 112. The teacher in room 111 was wounded but survived. He told interviewers that Ramos entered room 112 first then came into his adjoining room and started shooting. He also stated that the door was locked. The legislature investigators decided he must have entered room 111 under the assumption that it was unlocked. Ramos proceeded to fire off clip after clip. Law enforcement estimated he fired “at least” 100 of the 142 spent cartridges later found in the two rooms and killed and wounded most, if not all, of the victims. The video captures the sound of the firing but the sounds of screaming are edited out. By the time law enforcement got into the building some three minutes after Ramos entered, he had already done most of his shooting.
The video is shot from the north end of the corridor some 80 feet from the doors to the two rooms and does not show the whole picture. Two groups of officers, all from the Uvalde police and school police, entered the building at about the same time, one group from the north and one from the south, including the chief of the school police and a police lieutenant who was acting chief since the chief was on vacation. (He was in contact with him by phone.) The head of the police SWAT team also entered the building shortly after the shooting. The officers who came in from the north advance down the hall to the two rooms where Ramos is believed to be. One, who is in civilian clothes wearing a police vest, appears to be trying the door when a volley of shots are fired. Bullets tear through the wall around the door and perhaps the door itself. Several officers are hit by fragments, though none are seriously injured. The officers retreat to the end of the corridor. However, the other group does not retreat. The video doesn’t show them clearly because they are too far away. Occasionally, legs and lower bodies appear almost as shadows.
The media and politicians accuse the officers, all of whom are local Uvalde residents, of inaction. Some had relatives and friends inside those rooms. One officer’s wife is one of the teachers who was killed. To accuse them of inaction is inaccurate and callous. Although no one seems to have assumed responsibility as the on-scene commander, they were taking action, including calling for a tactical team with the necessary equipment to breach the door without exposing the officers to fire. The officers, most of whom were armed with pistols, were in a very difficult situation. They were facing a shooter armed with a semiautomatic high-powered rifle (any centerfire rifle is high-powered) inside a room possibly filled with children they could not see. Several officers came in with rifles but they were helpless as they had no target to shoot at. (Other officers came in, some armed with rifles. A total of nineteen officers were reportedly in the hall by the two classrooms.) Ramos, on the other hand, could fire through the walls and possibly hit someone. The suggestion that they could have broken a window and shot him from outside is not exactly sound. Ramos was inside and less hampered by visibility than those outside who were attempting to see in a darkened room. He also had the advantage of being able to fire at anyone trying to see in a window.
Critics cry that the officers had armor and shields. This is only partially true. While they were wearing vests, they only protect the upper body and they cannot stop rifle bullets. They do not protect the head and extremities. It wasn’t until almost half an hour after Ramos entered the school that the first shields arrived and they were not designed to protect against rifle fire. They have also been criticized for not trying to batter the door down. First, anyone trying to batter the door would have been exposed to rifle fire. Second, the doors were solid steel designed to open outward. The frames were also steel. Battering rams, which they did not have, are effective against doors that open inward, as most doors do, but not against outward opening doors. Sledgehammers have also been suggested but whoever might attempt to use one would have been putting themselves in mortal danger. Yes, police procedures for school shootings call for neutralizing the shooter as soon as possible without regard for personal safety but procedures are written by staff on desks who most likely have never been in a shooting situation in their life. Plans and procedures go out the window when reality sets in as it did at Uvalde.
Until I saw the video, I was under the impression that the walls were made of concrete blocks. However, they appear to be sheetrock. The school was originally built in the 1950s and the west building was added in the eighties. While concrete would at least partially block a bullet, sheetrock will not. A teacher in room 109, two rooms away from room 111, was hit by a bullet that came through the wall. The officers spoke in whispers and kept their movements to a minimum to prevent Ramos from knowing where they were and firing through the walls.
Over the hour and seventeen minutes from the time Ramos entered the building until he was killed, hundreds of law enforcement personnel showed up at the school, almost 400 in all. Most were Border Patrol and Texas Department of Public Safety personnel – state troopers – who came in from surrounding counties. (Texas Rangers are DPS but the report doesn’t show any Rangers separately.) Officers from sheriffs and police departments in other counties and cities arrived, as did Federal officers who came from San Antonio some eighty miles away. There was a large contingent of Border Patrol agents, which isn’t surprising since Uvalde is only some 50-70 miles from the Mexican border, depending on which direction. It’s closest at Del Rio. There is a Border Patrol office in Uvalde and a number of Border Patrol officers live in and around the town. One off-duty Border Patrol agent borrowed a shotgun from the barber who was cutting his hair when word of the shootings was announced. He proceeded to the school and went inside and got his child, although which part of the school he actually went in hasn’t been revealed; Robb Elementary, which includes second through fourth grades, has some fourteen buildings on the campus.
Although the media has accused law enforcement of doing nothing, they were actually very involved. Some 500 students were brought out of the school. They didn’t want to risk bringing the children in the west building out into the halls where Ramos might fire at them through the walls so they brought them out through the windows. News accounts don’t reveal where the children were taken although they seem to have been taken to a central location, possibly the cafeteria or gymnasium, so school officials and law enforcement could get an accurate count before they were released to their parents. Parents and others who gathered at the school were kept at a distance both for their protection and to avoid chaos and confusion. Media has described the scene at the school as “chaotic” and while that might have been true outside since hundreds of LEs had shown up and had nothing to do, the scene in the hall by the classroom is anything but chaotic. Officers are waiting patiently for tactical personnel to arrive. Sharpshooters are on station with their rifles aimed at the doors in case Ramos attempted to come out. Some officers expressed concern about the possibility of being caught in a crossfire if officers started shooting from different directions.
Finally, over an hour after Ramos entered the school, the Border Patrol TAC team, or BORTAC, arrives. They are carrying the first rifle-proof shield to arrive at the school. US Marshalls had brought it in about a half hour before. They also have a device for opening doors. However, the BORTAC commander is advised to try it on another door first. He concludes that using the device would be too dangerous as the officers would be exposed to Ramos’ fire for too long. He elects to use a key to open the door. The legislatures concluded, based on conclusions from law enforcement personnel who weren’t there, that the door to room 111 was unlocked. However, the teacher in the room said it was. Chief Arredondo of the school police said it was. He could see the lock protruding into the door sill. The BORTAC commander, who actually opened the door, said it was. The claim that the door was not locked is based purely on conjecture. The irony is that the investigators never even addressed the possibility that even if the door wasn’t locked when Ramos found it, he might very well have pulled it shut behind him when he went in the room. The door was definitely closed. The “effort” to lock the door was probably simply tugging on it to make sure the lock engaged.
There were several rings of keys floating around. Chief Arredondo had a ring and some of the other officers had keys but none of them worked in other classroom doors. The principal and other school staff supposedly had master keys but weren’t consulted. Regardless, someone finally found a key that worked. The BORTAC commander opened the door and, using the rifle shield, the team rushed through the door and shot Ramos dead.
Some ten months ago, the nation and some of the world, at least those on social media, were obsessed with the case of Gabrielle Petito, a young new Long Island woman and wannabe social influencer, who disappeared while on a trip with her fiancée, Brian Laundrie. Laundrie, Laundry; Petito, Potato – tennesseeflyboy (wordpress.com) Laundrie also disappeared – but was “seen” all over the country, particularly along the Appalachian Trail in the Smoky Mountains of Georgia, North Carolina and Tennessee. Ms. Petito’s remains, or what was left of them, was found a couple of weeks after her parents reported her to New York law enforcement as missing and Laundrie’s remains were also found a few weeks later after flood waters subsided in the park near his home where he had gone hiking. Among his belongings was a notebook. FBI specialists were able to replicate the pages, or some of them, and the FBI, who has sole jurisdiction over the case since Ms. Petito died on Federal land, issued a cryptic statement that Laundrie “took responsibility” for her death. The young couple’s belongings were recently returned to the two affected families’ attorneys, including Laundrie’s notebook which the Laundrie family attorney released to the media, at least in part including the last pages in which he related generally what had happened. Her death is shocking to say the least.
At this point let me comment on my background – I grew up on a farm in rural West Tennessee and spent most of my time out of doors. Later in life I became a hiker, backpacker and caver in northeast Kentucky where I lived for a time. As an Air Force aircrewmember, I completed extensive survival training in the mountains of Washington State and Idaho and sea survival training off of Okinawa. I also had a neighbor die of exposure recently practically in my backyard. I’ve been in every state in the Union as well as several foreign countries and have hiked in the Rockies. I find Laundrie’s explanation perfectly plausible.
According to what Laundrie wrote in his last minutes before he put a pistol to his head and blew his brains out, he and Petito were exploring along Spread Creek in the Bridger-Teton National Forest south of Yellowstone National Park when she slipped and fell in the water and suffered injury to her forehead. Night fell quickly and temperatures dropped. She was in agony and after failing to carry her back to where their van was parked, he decided to put her out of her misery. Naturally, those who had already made their minds up that Laundrie was an abuser and had killed her in an act of domestic violence pooh-pooh his account. However, as an experienced outdoorsman, I see nothing wrong with it. Barring evidence to contradict it, I must accept his account at face value. The FBI seems to have.
Laundrie and Petito were camped on a spur of the main forest road leading into the Spread Creek dispersed camping area. The Forestry Service designates camp sites where people may camp for specified periods. Spread Creek drains from east to west into the Snake River about 3.5-4 miles from where Petito’s body was found. He doesn’t say whether they went exploring upstream or downstream from where their van was parked. He only says they were caught by darkness and were making their way toward their vehicle when he heard her cry out in pain. The creek bed is over 1,000 feet wide although the stream, which is divided into forks in places, is only a few feet wide except when it’s filled with water during wet weather. Darkness fell quickly. They were east of the Grand Tetons and thus in their shadow. Concerned about the sudden approach of darkness, they hurried toward their van. She fell in the water.
He didn’t see her fall but heard her cry out. It took him awhile to find her in the darkening twilight. When he did, he picked her up and started carrying her toward their van. Her clothes were soaking wet and she was shivering. He carried her as far as he could until he could carry her no further. He had apparently carried her to within 500-1,000 feet of their van but could carry her no further. He put her down and built a fire. He doesn’t say how he built it but he was an experienced backpacker and probably had matches. Although the coroner didn’t say much when he announced his findings – Wyoming coroners are prohibited by law from revealing the results of an autopsy – he did acknowledge that Petito had “blunt force” trauma to her head along with evidence of strangulation. This is consistent with Laundrie’s description of a growing knot on her forehead.
Falling in a stream is not uncommon, especially since she was hurrying and in dwindling daylight. Laundrie says the bump was on her forehead, which may indicate she fell forward and hit a rock. Spread Creek is very rocky. He also says the bump was rapidly enlarging, an indication of bleeding under the skin. She was shaking and complained about her feet hurting. How Petito was dressed is unclear. Regardless, her clothes were soaking wet after her fall in the stream. He believed she was becoming hypothermic, which is very well possible. Hypothermia is a cooling of the body. An internal body temperature of 50 degrees F is fatal. One “expert” interviewed by FOX News claimed the temperature in Wyoming then was “only” in the high forties, which is definitely cold enough to cause hypothermia, especially if the person is wearing wet clothing. As an Air Force crewmember, I often flew over cold Arctic waters. I attended survival training and refresher training several times. We were taught that our survival time in such waters without an exposure suit, a rubber suit in which some water is allowed in to form a layer of insulation, is measured in minutes. A few years ago a neighbor died of hypothermia almost in my back yard. It was on New Year’s Eve. This is the Texas Gulf Coast and it wasn’t that cold that night, probably in the forties. He went to a New Year’s Eve party at another neighbor’s house. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. His wife left him and went home. The next morning someone saw him sitting with his back propped against a fence. Several people passed by before someone went over to check on him. He was dead. He died only a few hundred feet from his house.
I had my own experience with hypothermia one January night. I flew a load of automotive parts, Holly carburetors, from the factory in West Tennessee to Detroit. The Piper Navajo I was flying had a Janitrol gasoline heater. The heater worked part of the way up but didn’t come on at all on my return trip. I spent over 2 ½ hours in the cockpit in temperatures below zero. I have no idea what the temperature was in the airplane but it was COLD. I was dressed warmly, or so I thought. I had on flannel pajama bottoms under corduroy slacks with a flannel shirt under a sweater. To top it, I wore my L.L. Bean Stadium Coat, a long pile-lined coat with a hood. I also had on a stocking cap, gloves and insulated hunting boots. Still, I got cold, really cold. I was shivering. Every minute seemed like hours until my home airport finally came in sight. After I landed and parked the airplane, I went outside and started my car then went back inside the office, a large room with a gas heater, to do my paperwork. I continued shivering. I shivered all the way home even though I had the heater on full blast. I didn’t stop shivering until I got in a warm bath my wife drew for me. Gabby Petito was shivering while Brian Laundrie “spooned” against her in front of a fire he had built.
Petito was in agony. Her head was hurting and she was fading out of consciousness. Fearing she had a concussion, Laundrie kept waking her up. She berated him for bringing her back to the agony she was enduring. He wanted to leave her by the fire and go try to find their car and get help, although just where he would have found it is uncertain. They were next to a creek bank in a National Forest in Wyoming, some thirty miles from Jackson, the nearest town. He doesn’t mention trying to call on a cell phone. Chances are, there was no service since it was a remote area. Gabby wouldn’t let him leave her. She was afraid the fire would go out. She was unable to move and wouldn’t be able to put wood on it. Laundrie feared the same thing, that the fire would go out and she’d die of hypothermia. He didn’t know what to do.
Laundrie was in the worst kind of predicament. He was thirty miles from the nearest civilization in a national forest with no facilities. His partner, his fiancé, was seriously injured and in agony. He had no way to relieve her pain and felt unable to leave her side. He had no idea of the extent of her injuries other than the knot on her head, which was growing larger, and that she was in excruciating pain. He does not state that she asked him to kill her but the implication is certainly there. He doesn’t say how he did it – he merely says, “I ended her life.”
Immediately after he did it, he felt he’d made a terrible mistake. It occurred to him that he should have built a fire as soon as he found her rather than trying to carry her to the car. How far away they were from the car when she fell is unknown. Her remains were found several weeks later on the side of Spread Creek less than 1,000 feet from where their van showed up in a passerby’s video. He does not say what he did immediately after her death other than to say that he “panicked”, although he doesn’t state if it was before or after he killed her. He apparently decided right then to kill himself but he wanted to go back home and see his parents and other family first. Just when he killed Petito is unknown nor is it known when he left for Florida. All that’s known is that he returned to his parent’s home on September 1; a traffic camera captured the van coming off the interstate at 10:30 AM.
Just what Laundrie told his parents when he returned home without Petito is unknown. Either he or they contacted an attorney they knew in New York and he told them not to talk to anyone, including Petito’s family. The situation has been complicated because her parents and stepfather have filed a wrongful death suit against the Laundries, although how they can expect to win such a suit is unclear since they had nothing to do with her death. They hired an attorney soon after they reported her missing and set up a foundation and started collecting money from the public immediately after her remains were found. They are linking her death to domestic violence even though Brian’s suicide note states that she was injured in a fall and he killed her to end her misery. The suit is ongoing and the attorneys are restricted as to what they may make public.
The FBI put out a statement that Brian “took responsibility” for her death in a suicide note several months ago. Both the Laundries and the Petito/Schmidt families were advised of the contents. Schmidt’s attorney alleges that there is another document “on an electronic device” that is different. The Laundrie’s attorney has acknowledged that there is something else. The contents of that document have yet to be revealed. Unless there is something dramatically different about it, I see no reason to doubt Laundrie’s account. He was the only one who knew what happened.
Long ago in a land far away, I played in the Great Southeast Asian War Games. One of the events in which I participated was the sport of what we called “bullshit bombing,” an event dating back to World War II when British bombers dropped propaganda leaflets over German cities during the “Phoney War” before the German invasion of the Low Countries turned the war into something other than phony. (Brits also referred to the period as the “Bore War.”) We’d load a C-130 with 70-pound boxes of printed paper at our home base at Naha, Okinawa than fly across the South China Sea to Da Nang in what was then South Vietnam. We’d spend the night in a hooch then go out the next evening and drop the heavy boxes over North Vietnam. Each box was packed full of leaflets with a message written in Vietnamese. We didn’t know what was on the leaflets – our job was merely to dispense them. The leaflets were written and printed by psychological warfare experts at an Army psychological warfare unit at an Army facility a few miles from the base. We had an identical mission off the coast of North Korea but that’s another story.
I HATED those missions! They meant an hour or so pushing the damn boxes to the back of the airplane along skate-wheel conveyers like the ones seen in grocery stores while sweating in our cotton flight suits and nylon flight jackets even though it was well below freezing outside. It was a tedious job – the boxes had sat on the conveyors for more than twenty-four hours and the rollers had sunk into the cardboard bottoms. The boxes had rolled easily into the airplane but rolling them out was hard work. My oxygen mask would start slipping around my sweaty face; even worse, the odor inside my mask became nauseating. Fortunately for me, I only flew a handful of those missions.
A year or so later, the Air Force declassified the North Vietnam mission (the North Korea missions may still be classified for all I know.) A display case was put up by the sidewalk in front of our squadron with examples of the leaflets with the translations beside them. Some were counterfeit money, but most had some kind of message. My favorite was one that gave first-aid advice on how to treat medical problems that might crop up during the long march down the Ho Chi Minh Trial to South Vietnam. The punchline was “If you follow these suggestions, you may live to die in South Vietnam.”
I thought of that leaflet when I was reading some of the accounts of the exploits of the beloved Ukrainians against the hated Russians right after the current war broke out. I read one about a woman who greeted Russian soldiers with sunflower seeds and told them they should put them in their pockets so they would sprout, and beautiful sunflowers would grow over their graves. As soon as I saw it, I knew it was propaganda. The wording was different, but the message was exactly the same as the one represented on the first-aid leaflets we had dropped decades ago. It was obvious the video was faked.
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to learn that that video and the myriad of others flooding social media were prepared by people who had been taught by US military advisors. After all, the US has been providing advice, equipment and training to the Ukrainian military since the Obama administration supported the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine in 2014. Not to mention that Ukraine’s current government, which is made up to a large degree of former members of the media, specifically the Ukraine president’s own production company, has the means and expertise to spout rhetoric and make videos that are nothing but propaganda, propaganda aimed not at their Russian enemies but at the Western world which Ukraine hopes to influence to come to their aid.
Ever since this war started, the world has been deluged by messages and videos from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky, the actor turned politician who became ruler of Ukraine, or “the Ukraine” as it was called before the Ukrainian parliament declared the Soviet Republic to be an independent country some thirty years ago. Zelensky and members of his government make claims that are obviously exaggerations if not outright lies. The media reports these claims without question and Western military analysts make projections based on what they’ve been told by Ukrainians. Some probably are aware it’s propaganda, but they have their own agenda, or rather they’re supporting the agenda of the Biden Administration and neoconservatives who see Ukraine as a means of instituting “regime change” in Russia. Much of the analysis reported in the media, including overseas outlets such as the BBC, come from The Institute for the Study of War, a neoconservative organization in Washington, DC that includes such prominent neocons as William Kristol, the former editor of the failed “conservative” news magazine The Weekly Standard, and David Petraeus, the head of the CIA under Barrack Obama. The founder of the organization is Kim Kagan, the niece by marriage of prominent neocon Robert Kagan, whose wife Victoria Nuland has played a prominent role in Ukraine. Nuland is of Ukrainian ancestry and the Kagans are descended from Lithuanian immigrants. Lithuania borders Ukraine and, along with Poland, ruled the Ukraine before they conveyed the eastern third of the region to Russia in return for assistance in their war with the Turks. (Whether it means anything or not, they are all Jews which seems to be common in the US foreign policy community.) The think tank was founded by Ms. Kagan in 2007 to study the ongoing war in Afghanistan, where she later spent time as an advisor to Generals Stanley McCrystal and Petraeus, with whom she, the Kagans and Nuland have a close relationship. Although her organization initially focused on the Middle East, they switched their focus to Ukraine during the Trump presidency. The Institute published a report in 2018 warning that NATO was ill-prepared for a war with Russia in Ukraine. To state the Institute has a vested interest in Ukraine would be an understatement.
The media takes Ukrainian claims of having killed astronomical numbers of Russian soldiers and destroyed hundreds of Russian tanks at face value, never mind that such claims are highly unlikely, especially since Ukraine claims they’ve suffered comparatively fewer losses of their own. When they do make claims of Ukrainian dead, it’s always civilians “targeted” by Russia, specifically the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. That Ukraine is grossly exaggerating numbers is illustrated by the claim that the “bomb” that struck the theater in Mariupol killed 300 when someone who was actually in the theater says the number is more like 100. Now, 100 people dead is a big number but it’s only a third of 300. The individual also said that the number of people actually in the theater at the time of the explosion was much less than the 1,300-1,500 the Ukrainian government “estimated.” He said there had been that many, but most had left. Considering the claims being made by Zelensky and his staff, I doubt this is an isolated incident. (There are also claims that the Ukrainian nationalists in Mariupol planned a “false flag” operation for propaganda purposes. These claims are vehemently denied as “Russian propaganda.” However, it is possible since the defenders of Mariupol are to some extent Ukrainian nationalists who have no love for the Russians who populate the city and surrounding area.)
Immediately after the war broke out, Kiev claimed that Russian assassination teams were planning to assassinate Zelensky and other Ukrainian leaders. They claim there have been several attempts, but all were thwarted by Ukraine intelligence. Now, Zelensky’s home and offices are in downtown Kiev. If Putin wanted to destroy the Ukraine government, Russian troops would have saturated the area with artillery, missiles and bombs, yet there has been no attempt by the Russians to destroy downtown Kiev, and they have the capability to do it. Putin said at the outset that he had no plans to destroy the Ukrainian government and he has made no attempt to do so, yet Kiev has made claims of such an intent.
Propaganda has been a weapon in wartime for centuries (and it’s often repeated in history as fact.) Propaganda’s purpose is to influence perception. In Ukraine’s case, Zelensky is desperate to convince Americans and Europeans that Putin is vicious but that the “brave” Ukrainians can defeat him – with Western help. He has been pressing for NATO to establish a “no-fly zone” umbrella over Ukraine even while the Ukrainian military claims it’s knocking Russian airplanes out of the sky like swatting flies and keeping Russian missiles from hitting their targets. If this is true, what’s the need of a “no-fly zone,” which is an impossible proposition in a situation such as that found in the current conflict? He wants Javelin antitank missiles and Stinger antiaircraft missiles – which are ineffective against high-speed aircraft and only have an effective range of some 12,000 feet – and he’s getting them. At least the weapons are being appropriated by the US and other Western governments. Whether they’re actually reaching the Ukrainian forces engaged with the Russians is another story.
Zelensky has made numerous untrue claims in an effort to influence opinion in the US and Europe. He claimed that thermobaric bombs, which were developed first by the United States during the Vietnam War, are “forbidden by the Geneva Convention.” They are not. He later claimed that bombs and artillery shells using white phosphorus are forbidden. They’re not either. He has been prolific with claims that Russia is “targeting” hospitals and the US media has been repeating the claims, without considering that the likelihood of hospitals, schools and other structures being hit by artillery, bombs and missiles is high in urban warfare. Not to mention that military forces often use such structures because they are supposed to be off-limits. Various international conventions have prohibited war waged specifically against civilians, yet it’s impossible for civilians not to be hit by bombing and shelling. Allied bombs killed hundreds of thousands of German and Japanese civilians in World War II after all – and some, particularly the firebombing missions that caused tremendous damage to German cities and arguably ended the war in Japan were deliberately aimed at civilians. Firebombing missions against Japanese cities caused more casualties then either of the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan, both of which were aimed at civilian populations.
Some Western leaders, particularly Americans, have been prolific with propaganda themselves. It’s become apparent to some that they are intent on waging war against Russia – using Ukrainians. They know that the use of NATO forces in Ukraine is a recipe for disaster, but they believe they can avoid it by supplying Ukraine with arms without becoming militarily involved themselves, at least not overtly. It’s likely there are already US and other Western personnel already in Ukraine. The CIA has a long history of providing “advisors” to one side or the other in conflicts in which the United States has no real public interest. (In the case of Ukraine, their goal is to undermine Putin and force him out of office.) They have waged secret wars all over the globe, from Africa to Vietnam. In most cases, their efforts have failed. The disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq are good examples of American failures, although both were fought using conventional military rather than CIA advisors and contractors.
The CIA also has a long history of supplying information to US media outlets, particularly the New York Times and Washington Post. It has recently come to light that fake stories were planted in the US media, including stories claiming that Russia planned to use “chemical” weapons. Now, bear in mind that ALL modern weapons are chemical! The doddering Joe Biden pronounced that if Russia used “chemical weapons” in Ukraine, the United States would respond, although how he planned to respond is unclear. The US claimed to have destroyed its stock of chemical weapons decades ago. (Never mind that the Bluegrass Arsenal outside Lexington, Kentucky has long been the storage facility for such weapons.) The shocking claim appeared immediately after Victoria Nuland revealed that there are biological research laboratories in Ukraine, laboratories financed at least in part by the United States. Furthermore, the London Daily News has revealed that there is evidence on presidential son Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop that he was involved in awarding the contracts to the labs. The CIA has also been found to have made claims such as Russia’s plans to buy weapons from China and that Russian president Putin is being fed false information by his advisors even though there is little or no evidence backing up the claims.
The media are also accomplished propagandists, and they’ve been putting out tons of it in this war. I’ve seen articles claiming that Russia “must be running out of precision weapons” because they were using “dumb bombs.” Look folks, precisions weapons, bombs and missiles that use an internal guidance system, were developed for use against high-value targets and they are very expensive to purchase and maintain. So-called “dumb” bombs are merely conventional bombs, the same kind of bombs used in World War I and since. They are simple and easy to build; they are merely a casing filled with explosives with a fuse to set it off. They cost pennies compared to the “smart” bombs that require a sophisticated guidance system. They are just as effective as “smart” bombs when used against targets such as troop concentrations and airfields where pinpoint accuracy is not required. Media accounts love to focus on injuries to civilians, and the thousands of refugees who have taken to the roads to flee the carnage.
There is also another problem unique to the current conflict. In recent years people with little else to do have taken to the Internet and become “sleuths” who seek out information to solve crimes. This practice has spread to “intelligence” as “Open Source Intelligence” or OSINT. OSINT practitioners use computer programs to dredge up information that they then compile as “intelligence.” Bear in mind that “intelligence” is actually a euphemism for information, information that may or may not be factual and in any case is open to interpretation. In many respects, this is exactly what government/military intelligence “experts” do, except military intelligence specialists have been trained to interpret the information they collect then make an analysis of that information. Much being reported in the media regarding Russian losses, etc. comes from such “intelligence.” Never mind that for OSINT to be available, it first has to be published on the Internet and it’s not likely that Russia is going to publish figures on the Internet for the world to see. After all, casualty numbers DO provide an enemy with valuable intelligence. (I know for a fact that US aircraft losses in Vietnam were immediately classified.) OSINT “companies” and individuals claiming to be companies have made claims such as that one Russian elite parachute regiment has been badly damaged based on “open source” information that most likely came from Ukraine. Another example is the “stalled” military convoy that halted for several days on roads north of Kiev. “Intelligence” regarding this convoy came from commercial photographs taken by satellites owned by a US company that provides its photographs to government agencies, and the media, for a price. OSINT “experts” made all kinds of claims about how this convoy had stopped for myriads of nonexistent problems when the vehicles had simply halted to wait in reserve until they were needed.
Ukraine has been prolific with its publishing of videos and photographs that seem to reinforce their claims of Russian “atrocities” and even of “genocide” as well as “war crimes.” One of the most recent is the claim that bodies of Ukrainian “civilians” were found in the city of Bucha, a suburb of Kiev after Russian troops withdrew. Some were allegedly found with their hands tied behind their backs. The video came from the Ukraine National Police, which makes the account suspect. Now, using corpses in warfare is not uncommon. One of the most famous was Operation “Mincemeat,” the use of a corpse from a London morgue to feed a false “invasion plan” to the Germans prior to the invasion of Sicily in 1943. Now, when the Russians first launched their “invasion” (Russian troops have been fighting in Donbas since 2014), the Ukraine government immediately began arming all Ukrainian civilian men – and perhaps some women – which means there are NO civilians in Ukraine and made an open season on Ukrainians, men in particular. Perhaps Russian soldiers did capture some Ukrainians then shoot them, a practice that is not all that uncommon in much of the world. One Buchan resident has said that the Russians went looking for men who had fought against the “separatists” in Eastern Ukraine, particularly those with neo-Nazi sympathies. Incidentally, there have also been videos posted showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting captured Russians. (Earlier in the war, Ukraine was posting videos allegedly showing Ukrainian women consoling young Russians who had just surrendered. They were even providing cell phones for them to call their mothers.)
One piece of propaganda that has been widely accepted in the US is that Putin was expecting a quick victory in Ukraine after his forces rolled up the Ukrainian opposition and captured Kiev, then took Zelensky out and hung him from a light pole. Never mind that Putin said at the outset that he had no intention of capturing Ukraine, but that his intentions were to protect the two provinces that had seceded from Ukraine. Yes, Russian troops moved into position in the vicinity of Kiev, but I suspect their presence was a feint to draw Ukraine’s military away from the real target, the city of Mariupol on the Black Sea. Mariupol is not only an important port city, it lies between Russia and Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014 after the population voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia (Crimea was originally an oblast but in 1954 the new Soviet premier, Nikita Khrushchev, who had ties to Ukraine, transferred it to the Republic of Ukraine.) There is another reason the city was on Russian radar – it’s the headquarters of the infamous Azov Regiment of the Ukraine National Guard.
The Azov Regiment was originally formed as a battalion in 2014 by Nazis who had played a large role in the overthrow of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych earlier in the year. Much of Ukraine supported Germany in World War II and there are still large numbers of Ukrainians who embrace Nazi philosophies. The battalion was formed specifically to fight the separatists in Donbas and has been stationed in the Mariupol region since it’s formation. Ukraine acknowledges that the regiment was originally formed by Nazis and neo-Nazis – as many as 20% of the battalion were acknowledged Nazis – but now claims it is no longer a Nazi organization. However, Russian president Putin doesn’t seem to think so and has attributed his motivation to order additional Russian troops into Ukraine to the regiment. The regiment is especially known for its propaganda activities, particularly the posting of videos, some taken from drones, on social media.
All in all, there is reason to distrust anything and everything coming out of Ukraine, including the various analysis posted on various web sites and in media AND the pronouncements from US government officials. It’s a propaganda war.
Vietnam veteran Fred Reed is a veteran journalist who lives in Mexico. Sadly, I fear Fred is right about America. It’s beyond hope.
Fred on Everything
by
Fred Reed
A Private Secession, Perhaps One of Many
Herewith a tale of a personal secession and how it came about. It is possible (though unlikely) that some will not be interested in my fascinating mental states. I think, though, that numbers may share them without admitting it. Since many are talking if only wistfully about secession from the Union, and worry that they are no longer where they were a few decades back, even though they haven’t gone anywhere, I offer some thoughts that may resonate.
Time was, you could be fond of America. It wasn’t perfect, as no country is, but you could like it. I am not speaking of patriotism, which usually means a loutish jingoism, but rather a sense of place, a fondness for a region and a people.
This I had. I am, in a sense that surprises me, a Southerner. I didn’t think of myself this way until recently. It didn’t seem to matter.
At about age four I lived a year in Biloxi, Mississippi while my father taught some math course at Keesler AFB, then five in Robert E. Lee Elementary in Arlington, Va., then two in Athens, Alabama, five in rural King George County, Virginia, and four in Hampden-Sydney College, which my Venable ancestors founded, in Prince Edward County, Virginia.
The South suited me. Barefoot and BB-gunned in Limestone County, Alabama, where the dog could go where she wanted and come back when she was ready. Arlington was not greatly Southern, just white post-war America, where you could leave your bike anywhere and find it when you came back. King George, wooded, on the Potomac, small farms and people who lived by crabbing on the Potomac, first day of deer season a school holiday because the teachers knew the boys wouldn’t be there anyway. And Hampden-Sydney College, rural, in Cavalier country, minor gentry of reasonable cultivation and a deep sense of history.
I liked the localness of the South, its quirkiness, the easy friendliness and courtesy that set in at Fredericksburg as you went south from the Yankee capital. I liked the music that sprang from the South, gospel, blues, zydeco, Cajun, bluegrass, country, rockabilly, rock, New Orleans jazz. It was hard to imagine these arising in, God help you, Massachusetts. There was in the hot silent summers of the Southland, a savor, a character, an unstated, unfocused rebelliousness, that I guess rubbed off on me. It was a place where the rumble of a Harley—potatopotatopotato—and the blat and roar of NASCAR made sense.
I also liked America, or thought I did, or at least parts of it. In my hitchhiking days I liked the desert West, California, the wildness and virility of West Virginia. The North seemed alien, New England prissy and meddlesome and in Boston they honked like geese. The Midwest? Pleasant but flavorless. This, the observation that America isn’t one place, that it is many places not all of which like each other, leads to thoughts of secession.
I didn’t think about this much, about being American. I just was. I said “we” sent men to the moon, “we” invented this and that. “We.”
Today many, watching the horror that is being made of the country, speak seriously of secession. My people tried it. It didn’t work. It won’t now. Maybe it should.
Twenty years ago I moved to Mexico, not because I disliked America but because I visited Manzanillo to explore, liked the life I found, and somehow never left. It wasn’t planned but just happened.
Then in America came—I’m not sure what, but it came. I watched with a sense of the intense wrongness of things as all that I had liked crumbled. Suddenly schooling was being endumbed, grammarless semiliteracy vaunted as authentic, as indeed it was: authentically semiliterate. Music became the obscene grunting of the slums. Cities burned while the police watched. Videos circulated of some hulking ghettopotamus slugging an Asian grandmother in a New York subway. The country grew coarse, government ever more visibly corrupt. Foreign policy fell into the hands of people who belonged in an asylum. The South again came under attack from a Yankee President and simian trash pulled down statues of men of whom they knew nothing and couldn’t spell. Increasingly troops had to protect the government from a disaffected citizenry.
As society decayed, and then worsened, I watched with sorrow and anger. Things that mattered were being destroyed and, I eventually realized, could not be restored. Start with college. Hampden-Sydney was the archetypal small Southern liberal arts school, of a mold with William and Mary, Randolph Macon women’s College—“Randy Mac” as we knew it—Davidson, Mary Washington, Washington and Lee, and so on. These taught the things that were thought, have always been thought to produce, cultivated men and women. History, languages, the philosophers, mathematics, the sciences, now mysteries to our burgeoning and vacuous rabble.
I began to think, what is there any longer to like in this place? On visits from Guadalajara to Washington I found it more like Khe Sanh during the siege than[FR1] a civilized capital—wire fencing against mobs, concrete stop’em bombs around federal buildings, on Cap Hill metal flaps that rose from streets to stop car bombs, surly police, growing censorship, venomous racial hostility, and prissy moral correction from the likes of Biden.
And then the marginal primates pulled down the statue of General Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond. Something snapped. I don’t know why. I guess I saw it as an attack on a time and place I valued, on a friendly and unpretentious gentility going back to Jefferson and Lee. To a point I had told myself that the dark Morlocks swarming from the ghetto to loot and burn were people too, that the vapid Eloi of the suburbs might be saved. No more. I simply and intensely loathed them. I had nothing in common with the Negros of the cities or the empty-headed peasantry of the suburbs and, frankly, no longer gave a dam about them. There came an emotional acceptance of what I had known intellectually for some time, that America was irretrievably over. The irretrievability mattered. It ended hopes that doing this or that or the other thing might stop the rot. It wasn’t going to stop. So I seceded, a secession of one, without a conscious decision to do so. I just stopped caring. And reflected that a country perhaps deserves what it tolerates.
The collapse became fascinating rather than disheartening, like watching a terrarium of insects and small reptiles. What garish and savage thing would they do next? One doesn’t often see the end of a civilization.
And so in the mornings I go to the magic window from Dell to see what gawdy efflorescence of comedic wrongheadedness the. inmates have invented. There is much to see. A transexual admiral, rates of crime astonishing to the world, the Daily Mass Shooting, police in high schools, catch-and-release for violent misfeasors. Police disbanded and defunded amid the growing slaughter in the streets. Algebra, English literature, spelling abandoned to please the wild men from the forest. Mixed-sex Marine training. Incapacity made a requirement for employment.
If you don’t let it get to you, it is one hell of a show.
Hardboiled is back! (The exclamation point is to arouse wild enthusiasm int the reader, a boiling literary lust.) Gritty crime fiction by longtime police reporter for the Washington Times, who knows the police from nine years of riding with them. Guaranteed free of white wine and cheese, sensitivity, or social justice.
NEW UPDATE! Remains confirmed to be those of Brian Laundrie. Confirmed by dental records.
UPDATE! Laundrie’s backpack and notebook have been found in a park near his home. Human remains have been found nearby.
While the world now knows that Gabby Petito is dead, and that the local coroner attributed her death to homicidal strangulation, in reality, very little is known about either she or Brian Laundrie themselves other than that they went to the same high school on Long Island then later became engaged and lived in Florida before they decided to set out on a national “van life” adventure visiting various national parks. There is a little bit of information about Petito, but not much, and practically nothing about Laundrie except a few reminiscences from people who knew one or the other of them in high school. Although there were reports that they were high school sweethearts, this doesn’t seem to have been the case. They were a grade apart and classmates have described Laundrie as a loner with few friends while Petito was gregarious and outgoing with many friends. Yet at some point they ended up together a thousand miles away.
Not much is known about Laundrie other than that he had few friends and kept mostly to himself. One of his classmates said he hung out with a group who had an interest in firearms. He graduated from high school in 2016. After his graduation, his family relocated from Long Island to North Point, a community near Sarasota, Florida, where they own a juicing machine distributorship. Brian moved with them and got a job at a Publix grocery store. Petito eventually ended up living with him and his family.
What Petito’s family does for a living isn’t mentioned in accounts of the ongoing saga. Her parents are divorced and her mother remarried a man named Schmidt; their combined family consists of six kids, of which Petito was the eldest. Her mother lives on Long Island while her father relocated to Vero Beach, Florida. (He claims he moved to Florida to be close to Gabby but Vero Beach is on the other side of the peninsula from North Point and 125 miles away.) One source claims he is a “former fire department chief.” She has been described by neighbors and her mother as “an artist” and “a free spirit.” Petito graduated from high school in 2017 and though her mother paints them as having a close relationship, within a few months after finishing high school the teenage girl had left home and moved over 500 miles away from her mother to Carolina Beach, North Carolina. It is known that she started work at the Smoke on the Water seafood and barbecue restaurant on the Cape Fear River in nearby Wilmington in September 2017. She apparently started out in the kitchen as an assistant then was promoted to hostess. She worked at the restaurant for over a year until January 2019. Those who knew her said she “loved everyone” and had a lot of friends.
Just how Laundrie and Petito got together is unclear. They evidently knew each other in high school. Laundrie said as much when he was talking to police in Moab, Utah. What is known is that they shared a common interest in nature and the outdoors. According to comments Petito posted on her Instagram, they were hikers and backpackers. Laundrie seems to have been an avid backpacker. He is reported to have hiked segments of the Appalachian Trail and to have spent three months camping and living on peanut butter and crackers. She bragged that they were young, fit and able to climb rocks and had no fear. Although she was in North Carolina and he was in Florida, they somehow got together. She quit her restaurant job in January 2019 and eventually wound up in Florida living with Laundrie in his parents’ home in North Point. (One journalist claims they “started dating” in March 2019, two months after she left Smoke on the Water.) She made reference to having spent time in Charleston, South Carolina with her godmother. After she got to Florida, Petito seems to have worked a couple of jobs, at Publix and with a juice bar. (She would later describe her profession to a police officer as “nutritionist.”) In July 2020 Petito announced their engagement. They were planning a beach wedding but the COVID epidemic put a halt to their wedding plans.
At some point, the couple decided to go on the move, to quit their jobs and travel around the country in a small van visiting various national parks. They both had jobs but were living with his parents so their expenses were minimal and they were able to save up for the trip. Petito either bought or already had a 2012 Ford cargo van and they began modifying it for their trip. It’s registered in her name but she told a police officer she hardly ever drove it. Laundrie worked on the van to make it suitable as a home on wheels – although they planned to tent camp – including installing solar panels to power batteries so she could use her laptop to tell the world about their adventures. They made a trip to California then returned to Florida. (The California trip was before they set out on their van life trip and may have been before they bought the van.) With their wedding plans on hold, they drove to Long Island for Petito’s younger brother’s high school graduation. They evidently took their time and drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway during the trip.
They left Long Island in early July to begin their trip. They planned to visit several national parks and end up in Portland, Oregon by Halloween. By August 12 they were in Moab, Utah where they were reported by witnesses to have got in an altercation near a grocery co-op in town. Someone called 911 and reported that a man slapped a woman. Police followed the van and pulled them over outside of town after it hit a curb. Petito admitted that she had “distracted him.” Brian told the officers she had “grabbed the wheel.” Petito claimed she didn’t but admitted she was hitting him on the arm; he had the bruises to prove it. He had numerous scratches on his face and arm. Petito had one; she told one officer that Laundrie had “grabbed” her face and one of his fingernails dug into her skin. Laundrie had numerous scratches and bruises on his face, neck, hands and right arm – she had been hitting him so hard it left bruises. It came out during the interrogation that she suffered from anxiety. The altercation came about either because Petito complained about Laundrie getting into the van with dirty boots or because he had criticized her ability to make the website she planned to use to become a social influencer among those who follow or are interested in “van life.” The officer put Petito in the back of his cruiser so she could benefit from the air conditioning then went to talk to Laundrie. At one point Petito is shown to be on the telephone to someone, apparently her mother. After talking to them separately, the officer decided that Petito had been the aggressor. She claimed she attacked Laundrie because he was telling her to “calm down.” He locked her out of the van to get away from her but she came in through the driver’s side and climbed over him then continued assaulting him while he was driving out of town. They both told the officer she was beating on him while he was driving.
After determining that Petito had been the aggressor, the arresting officer decided to charge her with assault and domestic abuse. However, a female park ranger who had responded to the call got involved. Apparently, they were pulled over inside the park boundary and she and a male ranger came to the scene. She is seen in the background on the officer’s bodycam talking with Petito, who had been placed in the back seat of the police SUV. She seems to have been sympathetic to Petito as evidenced by comments she made to a Deseret News reporter after Petito was found dead. Although her comments to the officer are blanked out on the bodycam footage, she evidently tried to convince him not to charge her. There was a comment that Petito didn’t want to be separated from Laundrie, as would have been the case if she was charged with assault. After discussion with another officer and the park ranger, the officer asked Petito if she had intended to cause Laundrie bodily harm. After she answered “no,” he decided not to charge her but recommended they separate for the night with Petito sleeping in the van while Laundrie went to a local hotel. He admonished them to have no contact at all that night, not even a text. When the officer handed Petito the keys to the van, which is registered in her name, she said she hadn’t been doing any driving. He told her she didn’t have to go far. He would take Laundrie to a hotel but she wouldn’t know which one. She left and the officer took Laundrie to a hotel for the night. They evidently continued their trip the next day.
I have watched the dashcam footage of the Moab incident. There is no doubt that Petito was agitated and distraught and became more so as the interviews by the officers continued. She was facing incarceration and a domestic violence charge after all. She admitted to attacking Brian and when asked if he had hit her, she replied with hesitation “I guess so.” She said he “grabbed” her face and his fingernail dug in. She didn’t want to be separated from Brian and said so. I thought while watching the footage that she appears to have PMS. She also appears hysterical. A young woman named Brittany Anne Coleman who knows the Laundrie family – she worked with Mrs. Laundrie – and Brian and who knew Gabby said in a Facebook post that Petito had “a laundry list” of mental and financial irresponsibilites yet she lived with both the family and his sister. (Rose Davis claims they were putting her and Brian up in a condo.) She also says they used Brian’s savings for their trip. Whether this includes the purchase of the van she doesn’t say.
It has since come to light that Laundrie left Petito in Salt Lake City and flew back to Florida on August 18, allegedly to clean out a storage locker, then returned on August 23. Petito’s friend Rose Davis claims they had been living in a condo – paid for by his parents. They may have put their things in storage prior to leaving on their trip and he returned to remove them before the rent came due. The last definite sight of Petito is when she was captured on video as she was leaving the hotel on August 24. What happened after that is unclear. Various people, mostly Tik Tok users, reported seeing the couple in stores in Idaho near Grand Tetons National Park and in a restaurant in Jackson Hole. The reliability of those reports are unclear. The couple who claimed to have seen them in the restaurant made their claim several weeks later and although they claim they were “1000 % certain” it was them, they may have actually seen someone else. The restaurant commented on social media that Laundrie and Petito were there. (When taking into consideration “eyewitness” sightings, it is important to recognize the power of suggestion. The photos of Laundrie and Petito didn’t start appearing until after she was reported missing, some two weeks after they were in the Jackson Hole area.) Their van appeared in a video shot by a fellow van lifer on August 27. The van was parked on the road near where Petito’s body was eventually discovered by searchers. (Media has claimed that this video pointed searchers to their campsite, but in reality campers on Federal land are required to register. The Spread Creek campsite where Petito was found is behind a gate. It’s shown on Google Earth. They probably had to have a key or a combination to get through it. They were apparently assigned to Spread Creek site 5 since that is where the van appears on the video. Her remains were found about 600 feet from the site.) Two other women, both Tik Tokers, claim to have picked Laundrie up while he was hitchhiking on August 29 on a road some distance from where Petito’s remains were found. The first woman says he told her to let him out when she revealed they were going to Jackson Hole. (The woman also claims he offered them $200 to “take him to Jackson,” which sounds far-fetched.) He apparently wanted to go to Jackson Dam on Jackson Lake. The second woman says she picked him up and took him to the entrance to the dispersed camping area. The entrance is just off of US 191.
There is one thing for certain; Laundrie drove the van back to Florida. The van showed up on highway video near his home at 10:30 on the morning of September 1. His family says he came home that day. Laundrie or his family contacted an attorney in New York who advised them not to say anything to anybody, including Petito’s family. Obviously, something had happened but just what has yet to be revealed. Petito’s mother claims the Laundries ignored her texts and phone calls. Allegedly, Laundrie and his parents went camping at Fort De Soto on an island off of St. Petersburg then returned home. Brian Laundrie allegedly told his parents he was going hiking in a large nature reserve on September 13 (originally reported as September 14) and hasn’t been seen since.
Petito’s family notified police on Long Island that they had not heard from her since August 25 and she was declared a missing person on September 11, two days before Laundrie disappeared. He and his family have been harshly criticized by media and social media users for following their attorney’s advice and not talking to anyone. This is what anyone should do who finds themselves in a potentially liable situation. It is in accordance with the Fourth and Fifth Amendment and legal procedure nationwide. Although the North Point police somehow got involved, they have no jurisdiction over the case since her death occurred in Wyoming. (North Point can handle the missing person case regarding Laundrie.) On the other hand, the FBI does because the remains were found on Federal land. The Laundries seem to have been interviewed by FBI agents. Brian Laundrie has been charged with misuse of a bank card but he has not been charged with anything related to Petito’s death. FBI agents are naturally close-mouthed about ongoing cases, which drives media into a frenzy. In fact, the main thing I’ve noticed about this whole circus has been the tendency of media to exaggerate and seemingly make things up.
What happened to Petito? I don’t know but I can think of several possibilities. That she is dead is undoubtable. Her remains were found by searchers on September 19, twenty-four days since she was last heard from. The local coroner, a medical doctor who was elected to the position, declared her death a homicide then almost a month later stated that cause of death was by strangulation. (By definition, strangulation is “The act of suffocating a person by constricting the trachea or upper airways.”) Naturally, the band wagon immediately found Laundrie guilty of Petito’s death as a result of domestic violence. While this may be the case, there are other possibilities.
Law enforcement determined that Petito attacked Laundrie in Moab, Utah. They also determined that she suffers from anxiety. Her actions in Moab indicate that she had a violent temper. It is possible, perhaps even likely, that she attacked Laundrie and he grabbed her around the neck. That is one scenario but there are others.
Laundrie and Petito had been living and traveling together for two years, so it can be assumed that they were sexual partners. Laundrie is 23 and Petito was 22. Petito has been described as “an artist” and “a free spirit.” She had several tattoos, which her mother said were an expression of her artistic bent. She was dressed somewhat skimpily the day of the Moab incident, in white shorts and a top that revealed her breasts beneath it. It is possible that she was into sexual experimentation. A practice sometimes used by sexual partners, particularly among those in their twenties, is “choking” which consists of one partner pressing on the neck of the other to cut off circulation so that they nearly black out. (One study determined that some 40% of twenty-somethings had been exposed to choking.) This creates a sensation that allegedly enhances the person’s orgasm. Choking is not advocated by sex therapists because it is a very dangerous practice that may result in death. It is possible that Laundrie choked Petito while they were engaged in intercourse and she failed to revive.
There is also another possibility – someone else killed Petito and Laundrie either found the body and panicked or discovered that she was not at the van. According to her Instagram posts, Brian would often go off on hikes and leave Petito alone at the van to work on her web postings. The first Tik Toker who claims to have picked Laundrie up while hitchhiking claims he told her he had been on a 5-day hike. She expressed amazement that he didn’t appear dirty but there is a public shower for hikers near where she picked him up. He was allegedly picked up on August 29, five days after they left the hotel in Salt Lake on August 24 and apparently drove north to the Tetons. It is possible – even likely – that the man seen arguing with restaurant staff in Jackson Hole was someone else. After all, the “recognition” came several weeks after the incident. It is also possible that the woman misunderstood him or misremembered and thought he said five days when he said two. It is possible that Laundrie returned from the hike to find Petito gone. Based on the dialogue picked up during the Moab incident, the two had started bickering. A witness alleged that Laundrie threatened to go off and leave Petito (he didn’t.) It is possible they had further discussion and when Laundrie returned to the van and found her gone, he may have thought she had left him. He may or may not have searched for her and discovered her body. The remains were found some 600-700 feet from dispersed campsite 5 where the van was parked, which is a considerable distance.
Where did I come up with this imaginary killer? The possible killer is not imaginary at all. His name is John Freeman Colt and at the time of Petito’s death, he was at large in the Rocky Mountains after escaping from a mental hospital in Kansas where he had been incarcerated after prison doctors determined he was too dangerous to release. He told doctors that if he ever got out, he’d “go on a rape spree.” Colt was sentenced on Dec. 14, 2001, to five years in state prison in Kansas for aggravated sexual battery, attempted rape, aggravated burglary, and four counts of aggravated battery against law enforcement. He was required to register as a sex offender for the remainder of his life. Doctors determined that he was hostile toward women and his hostility was increasing. Consequently, he should not be released so he was confined to a mental hospital instead. He had been in the hospital since 2007. He is believed to have planned his escape for some time and managed to ingratiate himself with three female hospital employees who helped him. He had someone buy a motorcycle and had it waiting for him when he managed to convince staff he was a new doctor who didn’t know his way around the hospital and went out the door. He had changed his appearance by cutting off his hair and shaving his beard. He somehow acquired camping equipment, a shotgun and a rifle and set out for the Rocky Mountains where he intended to hide out in state and national parks, particularly in Colorado.
By August 12, Colt was in southern Utah. He showed up in the town of Torrey and found employment at a restaurant called The Chuckwagon. He was using an assumed name – Jason Holt. He even had the audacity to set up a Facebook account under the Jason Holt name. He posted pictures of himself at his campsite – with a tent IDENTICAL to the one used by Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito! (The tent he started out with was reported to be green.) Colt’s camp was in a park near Torrey which is less than 400 miles from where Petito died. Petito’s remains were found on Spread Creek less than three miles from US 191, a through highway running from Douglas, Arizona to Yellowstone National Park. The highway passes within 75 miles of Torrey and is easily accessible from there. He was only a 6-7 hour ride from where Petito was found. He could have ridden to the Tetons, came across and killed Petito and been back at Torrey in less than 24 hours.
John Colt is a sexual predator, a hunter. He told his doctors he was going on “a rape spree” when he was released. A lesbian couple was found murdered in a campground near Moab. By an odd coincidence, one of the women worked at the store where Laundrie and Petito had the incident which led to their van being stopped by police. (Some “sleuths” have tried to blame Laundrie for their murders.) The two women were last seen the night of August 13, the day after Laundrie’s and Petito’s police incident and the day after Colt allegedly showed up in Torrey. Moab is right at 100 miles from Torrey. It is possible that Colt decided to take a trip north to the Tetons in hopes of finding a woman by herself in the park. He no doubt knew that Grand Teton is a magnet for campers in the summer and that nearby Jackson Hole is a playground for the rich and famous just like Aspen, Colorado. The road to the Spread Creek dispersed camping area is gated (which means Laundrie and Petito had a key or combination) but Colt was on a motorcycle and could have gone around it. Colt could have come up on the unfortunate young woman and realized she was by herself. He could have forced her out into the creek (he had weapons) then raped her and strangled her, then went back to the van and took her tent and other of her possessions (Where did he get the computer to access the internet? And the camera?) then hopped back on his motorcycle and headed back to Torrey. There can be no doubt that the FBI is looking at the possibility.
There is also another possibility. If Colt didn’t kill the two women, whoever did could have gone on up US 191 to Grand Teton and happened upon the girl. They could have kept going west, which could explain the “No service in Yosemite” message Petito’s mother got. They could have taken her cell phone and gone west to Yosemite, some 600 miles to the southwest. As far as is known, Petito’s cell phone has not been recovered.
If Colt (or someone else) killed Petito – and there’s good reason to believe he did – Laundrie may have come back from his hike after his ride dropped him at the gate and found Petito gone, along with some of their possessions. He may have thought she had left him. She had spent four nights in a hotel at Salt Lake and, in his mind, could have met someone and decided to take off with them. Who knows? He may have thought she was gone and decided to go home. In fact, that’s the only explanation for his return home that makes sense. If she died accidentally, why not report her death to the authorities? Granted, he could have panicked. If he killed her deliberately, there’s no telling what he thought but it wouldn’t seem that he’d head for home since that was the first place law enforcement would look for him.
The local coroner determined that Petito died some 3-4 weeks before her remains were discovered. Her body had lain out in the elements in a region where grizzly bears, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, possums, raccoons, rats, vultures and bald eagles could feed on her flesh while insects and worms wiped her bones clean. Her remains weren’t identified by distinctive markings, they were determined to be what was left of her because an item of clothing found with the remains was identified as hers by her stepfather. I grew up on a farm and we occasionally lost a cow. I remember one cow that died in the edge of a woods. I rode by the carcass on my horse a day or so later. I rode back by there a few days later and there was nothing left but skull and bones. It’s unlikely law enforcement was able to get any useable DNA from her remains. Although the weather was dry for most of the period, there were several days with rain, including the day her remains were found. That she lay dead for almost a month raises another question. Her remains were on the other side of a wide creek bed from a segment of road in the Spread Creek dispersed camping area. She died in summer when the park is full of visitors. Why didn’t anyone notice the odor of decaying flesh or see the flock of vultures that no doubt circled over her? Perhaps people thought they were circling over a dead elk or pronghorn. On the other hand, I’d think a ranger would have seen them and rode over to investigate.
Now that Petito’s remains have been found and identified and the coroner has issued a cause of death, the big question is where is Brian Laundrie? Laundrie told his parents on September 13 he was going on a hike in the Carlton Reserve and they have not seen him since. The Mustang he drove to the reserve was reported on the 14th and the Laundrie’s went to where he had left it and retrieved it. The media has made much of the 25,000 acre reserve but in fact the combined acreage of the reserve and the adjacent state park as well as other reserves and parks that interconnect is more like 100,000 acres, much of which is swampy. Law enforcement has made repeated searches but have yet to turn anything up. The media claims that the recreational park where the Mustang was found is an entry to the reserve. In fact, it is not. A canal separates the reserve from the park although aerial photographs indicate the presence of a sand bar near where the Mustang was parked Laundrie may have used to cross into the reserve. Heavy rains hit the area after Laundrie disappeared causing flooding and leaving much of the area under water. The weather history for September shows there were heavy thunderstorms nearly every day. Law enforcement reported that the street where the Mustang was parked was underwater.
The media has made much of the presence of alligators, black bears, panthers and poisonous snakes in the reserves. But the fact is that alligators rarely attack humans. When they do, it’s usually someone who is in the water. The same can be said of bears and panthers. As for snakes, the most poisonous in Florida is the coral snake. A reclusive, fangless reptile, it practically has to be picked up to bite. Cottonmouths and rattlesnakes have fangs but they’re not going to bite unless they’re disturbed and their bites are rarely fatal, regardless of how they’re depicted in film. Just what kind of equipment Laundrie took with him has not been revealed, if known. He was an experienced backpacker and no doubt had a sleeping bag and probably a tent, or a bivie sack, which is a lightweight shelter just big enough to insert a sleeping bag inside to be out of the rain. He may have had a hammock. (There appears to be a large blue backpack in the back of the van in the body cam footage taken in Moab. Laundrie also appears to be somewhat dirty, an indication that he had just come in from a hike – which may have been what set Petito off. Backpackers typically carry a sleeping bag and tent, sometimes with a sleeping pad.) “Survival experts” point to the need for fire without recognizing that backpackers carry small stoves that burn with a small blue flame and put off no smoke. They use white gasoline which is pumped up to create gas. Laundrie has allegedly lived for three months on peanut and butter crackers. In short, he could have survived in the reserve and state park. However, I don’t think he did.
Rumors have been spread that he somehow made his way to the Smoky Mountains and is “hiding on the Appalachian Trail.” This started after Rose Davis, who claims to be Gabby Petito’s “only friend” in Florida, commented that Brian Laundrie had hiked on the famous trail. (Rose’s claim of being Petito’s only friend is somewhat odd since her coworkers in North Carolina describe her as friendly and outgoing.) The Appalachian Trail is a footpath that starts in Georgia and follows the Smoky and Blue Ridge Mountains through North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia then continues on to Maine. It’s just that, a simple walking path with shelters at various intervals where hikers can spend the night. It’s not a place to hide. The trail is near the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive. (I’ve hiked segments of it and have driven the Blue Ridge Parkway from its terminus at Smoky Mountain National Park to Rockfish Gap in Virginia and have also driven Skyline Drive.) Although the trail is heavily traveled, the Appalachians are remote and secluded in places with little human visitation. Atlanta Olympics bomber Eric Rudolph hid out in the North Carolina mountains near Murphy and eluded FBI agents for five years. He was finally captured when a rookie cop inadvertently came across him while he was rummaging through a dumpster and recognized him from a mugshot. A Florida “hiker” claims to have encountered Laurie – in the middle of the night – on a lonely road just off of Interstate 40 at the North Carolina-Tennessee state line. He claims that Laundrie was driving a white pickup truck. He never thought of Laundrie at the time but thought later it might have been him. He then pulled up photographs of Laundrie and decided he was “1000 percent certain” it was him. Now, this encounter occurred literally in one of the darkest places on the continent. He indicated the other driver stopped beside him, meaning the only light was from their dashboards. (Headlights are directional and don’t reach back past the side of the vehicle.) There is NO WAY he would have made out features in such a situation! While I don’t doubt he had an encounter with someone in a white pickup, I seriously doubt that it was Laundrie. Others have reported seeing Laundrie in places as diverse as Alabama and Indiana, with numerous “sightings” in North Carolina and around Florida.
My personal opinion is that Brian Laundrie is dead. Regardless of whether he killed her or not, he was no doubt distraught at the news she had been reported missing by her family. (He disappeared right after she was reported missing and several days before her remains were found.) I would not be surprised if he waded out into one of the many pools in the reserve and shot himself, knowing his body would likely be consumed by alligators. It’s been over a month since he was last seen and no sign of him has been revealed. If he is dead, the real story of what occurred between him and Petito will never be known.
There are some things that disgust me about the circus, because that is what the story has become. First, there are the two clowns, John Walsh and Duane “Dog” Chapman, who have inserted themselves into the story. They are TV personalities who thrive on publicity. Walsh has brought millions and millions of dollars into the foundation he set up after his five-year old son was kidnapped and murdered – over $42 million in 2015 alone. Chapman served time for murder than became a bail bondsman. He managed to get a TV show after he went into Mexico and captured fugitive Andrew Luster – and was himself arrested by Mexican police for violating Mexican laws prohibiting bounty hunting. Then there is Gabby Petito’s family. Her father, mother and stepfather lost no time in setting up the Gabby Petito Foundation, then began appearing on television programs such as Dr. Phil. They’ve even appeared on foreign television. They are capitalizing their daughter’s death. Chances are, the foundation will fold once the furor has died down but it could potentially bring in millions of dollars, as John Walsh’s foundation has. The media has also been disgusting by engaging in yellow journalism – putting out glaring headlines for articles that contain very little information. Perhaps the worst are the know-nothings who have parked themselves around the Laundrie home and have been tormenting the family, as if their protests are going to accomplish anything.
At this point, no one really knows anything about what occurred at the campground except, perhaps, Brian Laundrie. He may not know – or have known – either since Gabby may have been killed and he came back finding her gone and thought she had taken off with somebody. Who knows? If he’s dead or never reveals himself if alive, no one ever will.
Well, they’ve done it again – the news media and irresponsible politicians, all Democrats, from Joe Biden on down, have taken an incident and remanufactured it to serve their own agenda. I’m referring to the murders of eight employees and patrons of three Atlanta area “Asian Massage Spas.” Even though law enforcement has made clear that there is no motive for the crime – the accused told law enforcement he is a sex addict and there was no racial motivation – members of the media and dozens of politicians have turned the murders into “hate crimes,” attacks on Asian women because of “white supremacy” even though there is no evidence to support such claims.
The facts are that 21-year old Robert Long went into three massage parlors and shot and killed eight people, six of whom were Asian immigrants; most were South Koreans although one was Chinese. Long was raised in a Baptist church but had developed an addiction to pornography and has been treated for sex addiction. His parents threw him out of their house the night before the shootings because he was continually watching pornography. Long told law enforcement that he went to the three massage parlors with the intention of killing the staff because they were engaged in sexual activities. He has said that he had patronized all three facilities and a former roommate at a therapeutic institution says that he told him that he frequented massage parlors because they were a “quick” way to get sexual relief. Although the Atlanta mayor claimed that the facilities were not under any kind of investigation, two have actually been under investigation for prostitution for several years. The third is outside the city.
As soon as the victims were identified, Asian and other activists and Asian politicians began claiming that the shootings were motivated by “white supremacy” and the women were targeted because they were Asian. They conveniently left out that two of the victims were actually white, a female and male customers. Members of the media began, without evidence, making the same claim. A number of “experts” appeared on cable news outlets and were interviewed by the media and claimed the shootings were racially motivated, again without evidence. They claimed they “fit a pattern” of “white supremacy.” Some members of the media and “experts” claimed that Long was lying when he claimed he attacked the three massage parlors because of his sexual addiction. Incidentally, when he was finally apprehended south of Atlanta, he apparently told law enforcement he was on his way to Florida to attack pornographers. The media reports and activist’s claims have caused panic among Asians, particularly women. (A week after the murders, a West Asian man in the Boulder, Colorado area went into a local supermarket and started shooting. He killed ten people, all white, before surrendering to a SWAT team.)
Now, there are occasional attacks on Asians, just as there are attacks on members of other races and cultures, but there is no evidence to link such attacks with “white supremacy.” In fact, the highest percentage of attacks on Asians have been by blacks, many of them women. “Attacks” include name-calling and even shunning, by the way. A few have involved violence. In fact, the number of actual attacks on Asians are actually very few. While the percentages of such attacks are rising, those percentages may be as few as two incidents. As for the Atlanta attacks, the only connection to Asians is that the parlors were owned and operated by Asians and most of their employees were Asian immigrants. Had Long wanted to kill Asians, why not attack Chinese and other Asian restaurants, or start shooting people on the street in Chinese districts? Like every other major city in America, Atlanta is home to large numbers of Asians.
Some media accounts attempted to link Long’s actions to the sermons he heard at his church. One article reported that the pastor had preached that women are to “obey their husbands,” which is exactly what Paul said in his letter to the church at Ephesus and Peter said in his first letter which he addressed to certain churches in Asia. Just what the admonition to wives to obey their husbands has to do with Long’s actions is unclear, since his targets were staff and customers of Atlanta area massage parlors where “happy endings” seem to have been common. The “happy ending” massage is common in massage parlors throughout Asia, either through masturbation, oral stimulation, or actual intercourse. Long seems to have blamed the women in the massage parlors for abetting his sexual addiction. Two of the three establishments are known to have been under investigation for prostitution in the past.
Having been raised in a Baptist church and been a member of various Baptist congregations and also attending a Baptist Bible college, I understand Long’s problem. Unfortunately, while God’s grace is the center point of Baptist theology, many Baptists, particularly preachers, fail to make the distinction between the soul, which is saved, and the flesh, which is not. The writers of the New Testament made clear that Jesus’ sacrificial death brought salvation to the souls of those who believe but not their body, which dies and decays and returns to dust. (The Bible promises that some will not die, but that their bodies will be “changed” and they will meet the Lord in the air at His return.) Christians have the same body they had prior to the conversion of their soul and that body has the same physical urges as any other body. This causes problems for young men and women as they reach puberty and find themselves with sexual desires. They become confused, sometimes coming to believe that they’re not saved because of such desires. This is a result of Puritan teaching. Puritans were the seventeenth century version of the first century Jewish Pharisees, who believed they earned favor with God by their own works. The apostle Paul acknowledged sexual desire when he proclaimed that it is “better to marry than to burn.” However, Long seems to have carried his confusion to a different level, to the point that rather than resisting Satan’s temptation, he came to the conclusion that he should eliminate the source of his sin by murdering sex workers and pornographers.
It does not surprise me that the media took off running with the “hate crime” against Asians narrative. Although members of the media portray themselves as purveyors of truth, they are anything but. Rather than reporting news, journalists and broadcasters actually seek to influence, and they do this by manipulating the public discourse. Speech is the manifestation of thought, and members of the media, who wear the mantra of the “free press,” are expressing their own thoughts, not reporting “truth.” Truth to them is whatever they perceive as truth, even if that “truth” is a product of their own imagination. Rather than being purveyors of “truth,” journalists are actually propagandists and what they write and speak is actually propaganda designed to promote a particular view. This shouldn’t come as a surprise since the first “newspapers” in what became The United States of America were actually pamphlets put out by those who had access to a printing press in order to gather support for their cause, whether it was to support the King of England or rebel against him. After the Revolution, Federalists put out pamphlets seeking support for the Federal government established by the new Constitution while anti-Federalists put out pamphlets advocating that Federal government was a bad idea. The situation was at least partially rectified by amending the Constitution to express certain defined rights to the people and the individual states. In later years, newspapers bore the name of the political party they were aligned with. Some still do.
While growing up, I read the newspaper every day and continued to read newspapers as a young adult and adult. It was while serving in the US Air Force in Southeast Asia that I realized that much of what appeared in news accounts wasn’t true. I was flying missions over North Vietnam and Laos supporting strike aircraft while the New York Times and other news outlets were claiming that Americans were “bombing indiscriminately”. In fact, just the opposite was true. There were strict procedures that had to be followed before a target could be attacked. We would spot a convoy of trucks but before we could run fighters in to attack them, we had to get permission from the US Embassy in Vientiane, Laos on missions over Laos and from higher headquarters on missions over North Vietnam. US aircraft NEVER bombed indiscriminately yet the media reported that we did. I learned then not to trust the media. Since that time I have been involved in several incidents that attracted media attention and have been interviewed by members of the media. NOT ONCE did a member of the media report what I had actually said. They had to put their own spin on it. NOT ONCE did I see an accurate account of an incident I had personal knowledge of.
In addition to a dishonest media, we have irresponsible (and dishonest) politicians. A good example is how President Barack Obama inserted himself in the George Zimmerman case. The media and black activists – and Obama – jumped to the conclusion that because Zimmerman had a German last name, he was white while Trayvon Martin was black. Actually, Zimmerman is of mixed race and at least ¼ black. His father is white, but his mother is from Peru and is of mixed Amerindian and African blood. But the incident that led to Martin’s death was portrayed in the media as a racial incident. Now we have Joe Biden and Kamala Harris doing the same thing with the Atlanta shootings. (They haven’t said anything about the Colorado shootings, which involved a West Asian man (Syria is in West Asia) shooting and killing whites.) They claimed the Atlanta shootings were somehow related to “white supremacy.” They joined a horde of Democratic Congressmen and women, including nearly every Asian member, who blamed the murders on hatred of Asians – and somehow related to Donald Trump because he referred to COVID-19, which originated in Wuhan, China, as the “Wuhan Virus” or the “China Virus.” In fact, the virus did come from China and was brought to the United States – as well at to Italy and other countries – by Chinese travelers. Incidentally, the deadly flu epidemic of 1957 was called the “Asian Flu” because it originated in Asia (China) just as the 1918 flu was called the “Spanish Flu” because it was first reported in Spain (although the first cases were actually in the United States.) Then there was the Hongkong Flu in 1968 that originated in Hongkong, or possibly Mainland China.
The Atlanta murders occurred late on March 16. On March 22, a Syrian immigrant named Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa went on a shooting rampage in a supermarket in Alveda, Colorado and killed ten people, all whites, with a semiautomatic rifle he had purchased six days before. Alissa, who is Muslim, had expressed outrage over “Islamophobia”. Syria is on the Asian continent, yet the media has yet to connect Alissa’s actions to his Asian origin. Were his actions prompted by the “anti-Asian” hysteria? We’ll never know. Already the media is portraying him as a deranged individual while portraying Long as a “white supremacist” whose actions were motivated by hatred of Asians.
tennesseeflyboy 